US Politics- Stay Gold, Pony Boy

[Sivin]

Saw that General Mattis said (by virtue of having no comment) he is not against women and LGBT people in the military, and that "who consenting adults go to bed with" has no basis on combat effectiveness.

Well, that's something I suppose. If I flunk out of school I can always go back to fighting whatever new illegal war our lords and masters of the Republic start.

[TheKitttenGuard]

It looks that Trump is going to be keeping it real.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/report-trump-will-maintain-personal-twitter-account-and-wont-adopt-official-potus-account/

Quote

“@realDonaldTrump I think, I’ll keep it . . . so I’ve got 46 million people right now — that’s a lot, that’s really a lot — but 46 million — including Facebook, Twitter and ya know, Instagram, so when you think that you’re 46 million there, I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working — and the tweeting, I thought I’d do less of it, but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press — so dishonestly — that I can put out Twitter — and it’s not 140, it’s now 280 — I can go bing bing bing . . . and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out — this morning on television, Fox — ‘Donald Trump, we have breaking news’.”

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

^^^^^

That is some impressive word salad right there. Perhaps you should keep it to 144 characters, Donny.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Oh look, there is a start to a plan: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443746/republican-health-care-plan-rand-paul

It will offer tax breaks, instead of subsidies. I will use myself as an example of why this won't work for most of the poor.

Say you make $13-$14 hour and are raising a family. Your monthly take home pay is around $2000 a month. You have two members of the family on daily medication and require quarterly doctor visits, so you need a "Silver" level plan with the lowest deductible possible. That plan cost $1300 a month.  Without a subsidy there is absolutely no way to afford an insurance plan. Likely no way to afford the the medications or doctor's visits either.

If you can't make the initial payments, what good does a tax break do you?

It will take away the "minimum" coverage requirements, and in order to make it all work, so people can't buy the low coverage (or no coverage) and then jump to a more comprehensive plan after they get sick the provision to require companies to not exclude or charge more for people with pre-existing conditions has been removed.

Sounds like a great alternative.

 

 

[OldGimletEye]

The Republicans are discussing "A Better Way":

 

[Yukle]

Only four days left! Time travellers were supposed to come back to prevent this moment ever happening!

[Martell Spy]

Thousands Join Rallies Across the United States to Save Obamacare

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/15/thousands_join_rallies_across_the_united_states_to_save_obamacare.html

 

Quote

 

Only four days left! Time travellers were supposed to come back to prevent this moment ever happening! 

 

• Yeah, Stephen King needs to write  a sequel to 11/22/63.

 

 

[Dr. Pepper]

The Orange Shit Thing lives up to expectations and whines on twitter about snl.  Everyday I wake up and am reminded that millions of disgusting pieces of shit voted for this thing not because they thought he'd make anyone's life better but because they hate gays, women and minorities so much. 

17 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Only four days left! Time travellers were supposed to come back to prevent this moment ever happening!

Oh gods, what if him winning is what they came back for?

[Sivin]

5 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

The Orange Shit Thing lives up to expectations and whines on twitter about snl.  Everyday I wake up and am reminded that millions of disgusting pieces of shit voted for this thing not because they thought he'd make anyone's life better but because they hate gays, women and minorities so much. 

Oh gods, what if him winning is what they came back for?

It wasn't the Russians... It was future Russians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're fucked.

[Commodore]

getting spun up about Russian conspiracies or John Lewis or Trump's latest Twitter beef is flooding the media zone with distractions

meanwhile Trump/congress are going to move at breakneck speed the moment he is inaugurated to start implementing their agenda

 

[Commodore]

1 hour ago, Lany Freelove Cassandra said:

Oh look, there is a start to a plan: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443746/republican-health-care-plan-rand-paul

It will offer tax breaks, instead of subsidies. I will use myself as an example of why this won't work for most of the poor.

There are lots of plans, they all get hashed out and something is formulated in the relevant committees, voted on and sent to the full House. 

Not sure about Paul's bill, but Ryan is pushing a tax credit, meaning you get the money regardless of your tax liability. It's effectively a universal voucher (I would prefer a tax deduction rather than credit, but this is the next best thing). 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Yukle said:

Only four days left! Time travellers were supposed to come back to prevent this moment ever happening!

Obligatory...

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Quote

The president-elect says: "We're going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can't pay for it, you don't get it. That's not going to happen with us."

Trump declined to reveal any details.

An embrace of universal health care would mark a sharp break for most Republicans, as they plan to repeal and replace the current health care law.

So isn't this pretty much Obamacare? Health insurance for almost everyone, and for the poorest who can't even afford the health insurance they get Medicaid. I guess if he covers people with pre-existing conditions or other things that insurance companies would use to disqualify you from being eligible for insurance in the free market under Medicaid that's probably an improvement on Obamacare. But that seems altogether too socialised medicine, certainly more socialised than Obamacare.

Then again, if you want socialist policies to be implemented in a capitalist, free market democracy you probably need a right-wing populist to do it.

More than likely though, someone else will write the replace stuff along very different lines, which will cut millions of people out of healthcare access and tell The Don it's great, it's marvellous, everyone wins, and then The Don will proclaim that America has been made great in healthcare for all, without actually reading what he's signed off.

 

 

[ThinkerX]

Trump weighs in with a ACA replacement.  But where's all this smoke coming from?  And why is it orange tinted?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-vows-‘insurance-for-everybody’-in-obamacare-replacement-plan/ar-AAlTSAO?li=BBnb7Kz

  Don't know if this scheme would offset the loss of the mandate, though.  (Probably not.) 'Insurance for everybody' sounds like a renamed version of the ACA.
 

But the republicans howls will be enough to wake the dead on this one. 

 

If Trump somehow pulls this off (maybe by cooperating with Democrats) he might just garner a tiny iota of respect.  But I'm not holding my breath.  (Or maybe I should, given that orange mist filling the room.)

Quote

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party’s congressional majorities.

Trump’s plan is likely to face questions from the right, following years of GOP opposition to further expansion of government involvement in the health-care system, and from those on the left, who see his ideas as disruptive to changes brought by the Affordable Care Act that have extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

In addition to his replacement plan for the ACA, also known as Obamacare, Trump said he will target pharmaceutical companies over drug prices and demand that they negotiate directly with Medicaid and Medicare

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

So isn't this pretty much Obamacare? Health insurance for almost everyone, and for the poorest who can't even afford the health insurance they get Medicaid. I guess if he covers people with pre-existing conditions or other things that insurance companies would use to disqualify you from being eligible for insurance in the free market under Medicaid that's probably an improvement on Obamacare. But that seems altogether too socialised medicine, certainly more socialised than Obamacare.

Then again, if you want socialist policies to be implemented in a capitalist, free market democracy you probably need a right-wing populist to do it.

More than likely though, someone else will write the replace stuff along very different lines, which will cut millions of people out of healthcare access and tell The Don it's great, it's marvellous, everyone wins, and then The Don will proclaim that America has been made great in healthcare for all, without actually reading what he's signed off.

 

 

I'd look at who he is announcing the plan with. His words sound good, but I doubt what is announced is anything Democrats like. What I'd expect is it'll basically be exchanges with minimal regulations. This will allow insurance companies to sell really shitty plans. And because they are shitty, they will be easy to afford. (They might be somewhat expensive for older people if they remove the regulation that limits how much people can be charged for age)  Thus, they don't need subsidies. So it's a win, win for everyone, except the poor fools with these plans. Trump can say he got to 100 percent coverage. The insurance companies get to sell a bunch of plans. And conservatives are happy at the cut regulations and that the subsidies are cheaper..

The good news is this is a starting point. They'll likely have to negotiate with Democrats. And since he's mentioning not cutting Medicare, he's likely not to f with it too much. It's ominous that he hasn't mentioned Medicaid though. Probably going to pull out the Paul Ryan block grant nonsense.

Maybe the Dems can negotiate to keep the Medicaid expansion. That'd be a positive at this point.

 

 

 

 

[Ormond]

8 hours ago, Mexal said:

 

In other news, some interesting parallels between Trump and Schwarzenneger when he ran and won governship of CA. 

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-schwarzenegger-20170113-story.html

Thanks for linking to that very interesting article. 

I think the real difference between Trump and Schwarzenegger, though, is found in the following sentence from the article:

And another lesson he might adopt is learning to fret less about getting attention for yourself at the moment than winning the long game.

I just haven't seen any evidence at all that Trump is capable of that. It seems to be that Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and Bill Clinton -- are examples of politicians who were way too narcissistic for their own good in a way that got them into trouble both in politics and their personal lives. But their narcissism just didn't rise to the pathological level of Trump's. Trump is so narcissistic that it seems he can't learn from his own mistakes, or pay real attention to policy, and certainly not stop blasting people who criticize him in ways that will keep those who dislike him constantly motivated to actually do something about this dislike. Trump just is not going to learn to "fret less about getting attention for himself at the moment."  

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Goddammit, I like it.

[Ordos]

4 hours ago, Yukle said:

Only four days left! Time travellers were supposed to come back to prevent this moment ever happening!

Give them time until that moment he is taking the oath of office. 

[Fragile Bird]

On ‎1‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 4:29 PM, Mudguard said:

So exactly what were his contributions in the FIFA investigation?  Since you are claiming that he's the one who brought FIFA down, presumably he played a critical role in the effort.  Everything I've read about Steele's involvement has been extremely vague.  Do you have any citations that explain his role and contributions in detail?  Seems to me like he was brought in when it was already pretty clear that there was evidence of wrongdoing.  

My statement says that I'm skeptical of the report after intelligence agencies and new agencies have failed to corroborate any of the substantive allegations after many months.  What do you think my statement says about me?

What, you don't know how to use Google? Steele was hired by the English FA, the Football Association, to look into corruption in FIFA, and that report led the FBI to come a calling in 2010. The report was used in the investigation that led to dozens of indictments on corruption charges being brought against soccer officials, leading to FIFA head Sepp Blatter and other senior officials being forced to resign.

And in the post above the one quoted, you denigrate Steele, his skills, his honesty and go on to say he was completely inept and duped.  Yeah, because you know so much more than the intelligence services of your country.  So, uh-huh, that says a lot about you.

And you know what?  Go use that google-thingy and guess what you're going to find out?  There are dozens of reports circulating around Europe about Trump's relationships and dealings with the Russians, and intelligence agencies across Europe are all busy trying to validate the information out there, from the British to the French to the Germans to the Israelis. There apparently is just soooooooooo much shit out there on Trump, reports are saying US allies are now reviewing how they are going to handle the sharing of top secret information, because the reliability of the US is now being called into question.  And the reports also apparently contain all kinds of other stories about Le Grand Orange.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about them.

ETA: Oh, and one more thing about all the stories on the internet. Steele and his colleagues started getting so alarmed by what they were finding out about Trump, they carried on their investigations without payment, and brought their report to the FBI months ago.  There was absolutely no interest at the FBI in the report that they could see, so they shared the report, apparently, with British intelligence, US politicians, and even spoke to Mother Jones about what they found.

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

An embrace of universal health care would mark a sharp break for most Republicans, as they plan to repeal and replace the current health care law.

It will be really, really funny if Trump decides to implement his universal health care plan from back when he was part of the Reform Party. It would mean taking on the insurance and medical industries, but it would very amusing.