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US Politics: Get Tested or Get Bested


Tywin Manderly

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3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I mentioned a few days ago that Trump wants his signature on the crisis checks that go out to people, and the pushback was everyone has direct deposit.

I just heard the number: 60% of US taxpayers have direct deposit. There were 140 M taxpayers in 2018 (weirdly, there were 143 M in 2017, the number went down). So potentially 56 M checks will go out with Trump's name on them, if he manages to get that arranged. Many people will try to get direct deposit arranged, but who knows how many will succeed. 

I gotta say, I'm impressed. Republicans didn't just win this one, Democrats might as well hold hands and jump into a volcano together. 

Enjoy your thousand bucks morons.

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37 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I just heard the number: 60% of US taxpayers have direct deposit. There were 140 M taxpayers in 2018 (weirdly, there were 143 M in 2017, the number went down). So potentially 56 M checks will go out with Trump's name on them, if he manages to get that arranged. Many people will try to get direct deposit arranged, but who knows how many will succeed.

And the voter turnout in 2016 was 60.1% of VEP (voting eligible population) with just under 139 million total ballots cast.  The disengaged are, yes, going to continually be fucked over.  But that's a larger systemic problem that will take a lot of work to solve - with or without the current pandemic.  Point is, Trump's signature on the check ain't changing the vote choice for the basically any habitual voter.  Could it for new voters?  I suppose that's a theory one could entertain, but I'm already skeptical just based on the basic premises or assumptions of such a theory.

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Ruh roh. Has AOC been deemed unclean by "progressive" purists?

If we're forecasting political futures and capacity to actually do anything useful for progressive causes, my money is definitely on AOC and not on the Cenk Uygurs of the world.

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2 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

my money is definitely on AOC and not on the Cenk Uygurs of the world.

Ha!  Yeah me too.  Good for AOC.  I assigned this reading for this week in my course, meant to record the lecture this afternoon but, well, I decided to waste me time here instead.  There's always going to be people on the outer ends that will attack you for not being purist enough - particularly when you start actually trying to influence policy on the HIll.  I trust AOC's instincts in how to balance that.

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Well, I guess once in a while he does actually tell the truth:

Quote

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.”

Democrats often accuse Republicans of deliberately making it hard to vote in order to keep minorities, immigrants, young people and other groups from the polls. And Republicans often say they oppose voting reforms because of concerns of voter fraud – which is extremely rare – or concerns over having the federal government run elections. But Trump’s remarks reveal how at least some Republicans have long understood voting barriers to be a necessary part of their political self-preservation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus

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God this press conference seems to have more looney tunes than ever.

"The economy has always been #2 for me, saving lives is #1."

"We have done more tests than any country in the world and they are better than the tests done by any other country in the world."

He said 'everything is under control' because he didn't want to panic the country....

oh here we go again

"We inherited a broken system, a system that didn't work"

And for at least three days in a row, he saw a picture of an empty 5th Ave, something he's never seen before in his life. Is his short term memory that bad?

I wonder who his heavy set friend is, the one in the coma. Could it be someone who got Covid-19 at Mar-a-Lago?

And more fights with reporters, more 'nasty' questions.

And just what is it with the weird pronunciations of words he does? 'China' and other words.

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2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Particularly when he ran on not supporting M4A for the last year.  For him to change his policy now would be an extremely risky and highly questionable choice. 

That was then, right?  You think everything is the same now or in November?

:P:rolleyes::(

He also thinks its too harsh to admit trump has blood on his hands.

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22 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That was then, right?  You think everything is the same now or in November?

You think the people that were opposed to MFA are going to change their minds based on the pandemic?  The voters that are scared of losing their private insurers are now miraculously gonna say "ya know, now that I'm in significantly more danger of dying, I'll change my preferences on my healthcare provider"?

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4 minutes ago, DMC said:

You think the people that were opposed to MFA are going to change their minds based on the pandemic?  The voters that are scared of losing their private insurers are now miraculously gonna say "ya know, now that I'm in significantly more danger of dying, I'll change my preferences on my healthcare provider"?

Depends, because losing one's job often also means losing your insurance, and the number I keep hearing projected is around 30% unemployment by the end of Q2. 

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4 minutes ago, Mystical said:

How is this even going to work for you Americans, if I may ask? Since you don't have universal health care, what happens when you guys don't have jobs anymore to pay for insurance and then get sick?

Sounds like a poor people problem, doesn't apply to Real Americans.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

 

I wonder who his heavy set friend is, the one in the coma. Could it be someone who got Covid-19 at Mar-a-Lago?

 

This was a lie. He has a tell - any time he's telling a story and the guy says 'sir' to him, he's entirely making it up. 

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3 hours ago, Ran said:

M4A is a loser in polling. It's not a shock that Elizabeth Warren's faltering in polls exactly happened when she presented her M4A plan. It's not a surprise that Biden is opposed.

A public option, as in Biden's proposal, is a more popular measure. Let insurers compete against a robust government plan. If they can manage, great, the market works. If they can't, the popularity of M4A will increase with time until it is inevitable.

 

I would argue that she started dropping in the polls because people saw that she was equivocating on M4A. The fact is that her plan was not as good as Bernie's, and people saw that. Everyone knew that Warren was for Medicare for all, no one stopped supporting her for that. M4A enjoys a majority support in the Democratic party, in fact on Super Tuesday exit polls it was between 50% (MA) and 72%(VT) averaging out at 57%, and that is with Biden's triumph. Nationwide regardless of party, it is at about 56% which is pretty good considering that it is being attacked by the Republicans and the "moderate Democrats". Most people are not voting for Biden on policy grounds, it is all about his perceived electablity and how they just want to go back to the ignorant comfort of the Obama years when they could pretend that nothing was wrong while people still suffered.

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

You think the people that were opposed to MFA are going to change their minds based on the pandemic?  The voters that are scared of losing their private insurers are now miraculously gonna say "ya know, now that I'm in significantly more danger of dying, I'll change my preferences on my healthcare provider"?

I would argue that it makes it easier to make the case. Seeing people dying or being deeply in debt after losing their jobs because of this crisis should be a wake up call to all those who oppose it. We need to make it clear that those people's deaths and impoverishment is on the private insurance system. I don't think that the healthcare industry is going to come out of this looking very good.

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2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

I would argue that it makes it easier to make the case. Seeing people dying or being deeply in debt after losing their jobs because of this crisis should be a wake up call to all those who oppose it. We need to make it clear that those people's deaths and impoverishment is on the private insurance system. I don't think that the healthcare industry is going to come out of this looking very good.

And what's even more popular? A public option:

Quote

 

A narrow majority of Americans favors a national “Medicare for All” health plan, according to a new poll, but even more like a public option.

The poll, released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 56 percent of respondents said they want Medicare for All, while 68 percent said they favored a public option that competes alongside private insurance. 

 

In general, it's a bad idea to go with something less popular than more popular. 

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4 hours ago, Ran said:

M4A is a loser in polling. It's not a shock that Elizabeth Warren's faltering in polls exactly happened when she presented her M4A plan. It's not a surprise that Biden is opposed.

A public option, as in Biden's proposal, is a more popular measure. Let insurers compete against a robust government plan. If they can manage, great, the market works. If they can't, the popularity of M4A will increase with time until it is inevitable.

 

This says M4A is not a loser in polling: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/480719-poll-narrow-majority-favors-medicare-for-all

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14 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Without any comment on where exactly the bottom is going to be on unemployment I am very curious / worried about whether there's a death-spiral on health insurance based on the unemployment fallout.  We've heard plenty about the Obamacare exchanges over the years and whether this phenomenon would take hold, but those exchanges aside I do wonder what happens to other insurance pools assuming there's a huge new unemployment number which sure looks likely.  

I know there's that COBRA program which can help some stay on their insurance for a few months, but it's expensive and no panacea.  

I'm inclined to think all expenses will have to be forgiven. And I do mean all. Again, like half the adults in this country say that they can't handle an unexpected $400 bill. Well, those exact people are about to get an unexpected bill that vastly exceeds that while probably losing their jobs.

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2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Ruh roh. Has AOC been deemed unclean by "progressive" purists?

If we're forecasting political futures and capacity to actually do anything useful for progressive causes, my money is definitely on AOC and not on the Cenk Uygurs of the world.

Well...TYT and specifically Cenk is not a progressive purist. I'm not sure what he is. But that article is hardly convincing that there is a break with Bernie. 

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7 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Well...TYT and specifically Cenk is not a progressive purist. I'm not sure what he is. But that article is hardly convincing that there is a break with Bernie. 

He just hates anything "establishment" because he thinks he lost his job at MSNBC over big money's interference. In reality it was just because he largely had a shit time spot to begin with, and his brand of politics doesn't appeal to older audiences who would have been watching him.

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