TRUMP - Just because.....................Naw, I just can't say it!
POSTED BY: SHINYGOODGUY
UPDATED: Monday, March 9, 2026 20:06
VIEWED: 244478
PAGE 157 of 170
Quote:
Originally posted by G:
I thought it was weed - seriously. If I go to Africa I'm gonna partake.
Nothing wrong with weed.
It's on the top of my to-do list when I get a decent job and don't have to worry about drug tests anymore.
I'm much more agreeable when I'm high.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I celebrate Rich Privilege! Did you know what privilege Trump receives for killing Obamacare? A personal tax cut worth millions every year for the rest of his life! That is why Trump is so eager to repeal -- he gets paid to repeal.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And here's a video of Barack Obama whining about White Privilege in his hometown...
Trump’s taxes change from 18.8% to 15% on investment income in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 filing jointly); from 23.8% to 20% in excess of $418,400 ($470,700 joint) — so basically Trump gets a $3.8 million tax break on each additional $100 million in dividends and capital gains that he earns.
https://andrewtobias.com/the-russia-thing-just-keeps-growing/
President Obama and the congressional Democrats who wrote Obamacare didn’t find the money for those subsidies hidden in a banana stand — they did what Democrats like to do when paying for things and raised taxes on affluent families.
Republicans do not like this idea. They dislike the idea of raising taxes on wealthy households so much that back in 2011, they pushed the country to the brink of defaulting on the national debt rather than agree to rescind George W. Bush’s high-end tax cuts. In December 2012, they tried to insist that they wouldn’t let Obama extend the portion of the Bush tax cuts that everyone (including rich people) got unless he also extended the tax cuts that only rich people got.
All of which is to say that despite Democrats’ occasional protestations of bafflement as to why the GOP would so uniformly oppose a market-based approach to universal health care that Mitt Romney happily adopted in the mid-aughts in Massachusetts, there’s no real mystery here. Subsidizing the health care costs of working-class people is expensive, and while Democrats want rich people to pay the freight for doing it, Republicans do not.
That’s an important reason why they opposed the Affordable Care Act, it’s an important reason why they want to repeal it, it’s an important reason why they can’t replace it with something better, and it’s also an important reason why they may end up just dropping the whole idea of repeal.
The tax issue is the $500 billion elephant in the room. It’s a key reason GOP leaders want repeal, a key reason GOP leaders have trouble agreeing on a replacement, and potentially a key reason they’ll ultimately decide to move on to other matters. Talking about health care politics without talking about the revenue side misses an enormous part of the story.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/17/14263918/affordable-care-act
-tax-cut
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www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2017/01/17
Trump questioned Obama’s legitimacy many, many times.
www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/
Trump Dropped his False ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floated a New One: Clinton Started It
www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/politics/donald-trump-birther-obama.html
Mr. Trump made no apology for and took no questions about what had amounted to a five-year-long smear of the nation’s first black president. Instead, he claimed, falsely, that questions about Mr. Obama’s citizenship were initially stirred by the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, in her unsuccessful primary contest against Mr. Obama in 2008.
Still, Mr. Trump’s brief remarks, tacked on to the end of a campaign appearance with military veterans at his new hotel in downtown Washington, represented a sharp reversal from a position he had publicly maintained, over howls of outrage from all but the far-right extreme of the political spectrum, since 2011.
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How Jokes Won the Election
How do you fight an enemy who’s just kidding?
By Emily Nussbaum
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/how-jokes-won-the-election
When Vladimir Putin was elected President, in 2000, one of his first acts was to kill “Kukly,” a sketch puppet show that portrayed him as Little Tsaches, a sinister baby who uses a “magic TV comb” to bewitch a city. Putin threatened to wreck the channel, NTV, unless it removed the puppet. NTV refused. Within months, it was under state control. According to Newsweek, “Putin jokes quickly vanished from Russia’s television screens.”
Soon after Trump was elected, he, too, began complaining about a sketch show: “Saturday Night Live,” which portrayed him as a preening fool, Putin’s puppet. His tweets lost the shape of jokes, unless you count “not!” as a kicker. He was reportedly meeting with Rupert Murdoch about who should head the F.C.C. Soon, Trump would be able to shape deals like the A.T. & T. and Time Warner merger, to strike back at those who made fun of him or criticized him, which often amounted to the same thing. Fox would likely be Trump TV.
Last week, at his first press conference as President-elect, Trump made no jokes. He was fuming over the BuzzFeed dossier and all those lurid allegations worthy of “South Park,” the pee jokes lighting up Twitter. Only when he reminisced about his rallies did he relax, recalling their size, the thrill of the call and response. He almost smiled. But when CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to ask a question about Russia, Trump snapped back, furiously, “Fake news!”—and the incoming White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told Acosta that if he tried that again he’d be thrown out. Now, it seems, is when Trump gets serious. A President pushes buttons in a different sense. As Putin once remarked to a child, “Russia’s borders don’t end anywhere”—before adding, “That’s a joke.”
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Retweeting Donald Trump
www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/retweeting-donald-trump.html
Trump has shown himself incapable of turning the other cheek and converting doubters into allies.
Trump tweets that sound magnanimous would have generated a flood of good will and it would have cost Trump nothing. Some hypothetical examples:
1) What if, after Meryl Streep used her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to decry Trump’s cruel impersonation of a handicapped reporter, Trump — instead of ridiculously calling her “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood” — had tweeted: “Meryl Streep, greatest actress ever, ever, ever. Stuff happens in campaigns, Meryl. Even I have regrets. But watch, I’ll make you proud of my presidency!!!!”
2) What if, after John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights hero, questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s election, Trump hadn’t sneered that Lewis was “all talk, talk, talk” and “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape.” What if Trump instead tweeted: “John Lewis, a great American, let’s walk together through your district and develop a plan to improve people’s lives there.”
3) What if on New Year’s Trump — instead of tweeting “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies” who “lost so badly they just don’t know what to do” — had tweeted: “Happy New Year to every American — especially to Hillary Clinton and her supporters who fought a tough campaign — very tough. Let’s together make 2017 amazing (!!!!!!) for every American. Love!”
4) What if, after a cast member of the musical “Hamilton” appealed to Vice President-elect Mike Pence to “uphold our American values” and “work on behalf of all of us,” Trump — instead of denouncing the actor had instead tweeted: “To the cast of Hamilton: Appreciate your sincere concern for our country. When I am in the room where it happens, good stuff will happen. I will not throw away my shot to work on behalf of all of us!!!”
5) What if Trump — instead of calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “head clown” — had tweeted: “Chuck, you are THE MAN!!! Top Democrat now that Obama’s gone!!! You love to deal. Send me your best health care experts and we’ll fix this thing together in 24 hours. Call me!!!”
The movie “Invictus” tells how Nelson Mandela, when he became South Africa’s president, built trust with the white community. Shortly after Mandela took power, his sports advisers wanted to change the name and colors of the country’s famed rugby team —the almost all-white “Springboks” — to something more reflective of black African identity.
Mandela refused. He told his aides that the key to making whites feel at home was not uprooting all of their cherished symbols. “We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity,” said Mandela.
Most Americans are good-hearted people who are actually starved to feel united again. Many who voted against Trump would have given him a second look had he surprised them with generosity and grace. He did just the opposite. Sad.
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Trump is sabotaging the GOP by nominating weak Cabinet members
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/18/14305814/betsy-devos-sabotag
e
Republicans should want someone conservative in the role of secretary of education, of course. But they should also want someone who looks smart, sharp, and competent discussing the issues in front of the cameras. Someone with a sympathetic story to tell about the role of education in their lives and with an unquestioned command of the subject matter. The kind of person you would say you respect even while disagreeing. Someone who can win over skeptics or smooth the edges off disagreement. Betsy DeVos is not like that at all, because she’s wholly unlike previous nominees who come from politics or public sector education policy work where they have to do this stuff all the time.
DeVos has real background in education policy, but it’s background as a donor to conservative education groups.
Having spent some time working for nonprofits over the course of my career, I can tell you that generous funders are without exception the kindest, smartest, most perceptive people you will ever meet. Their questions are all great, and their points are all brilliant. The lessons they learned doing whatever it is they did to get the money they are now giving away are all 100 percent relevant and applicable to whatever it is you are discussing right now. And yes that article they read last week really was brilliant and absolutely we should be doing more on that issue.
Which is just to say that rich donors live in a weird psychological bubble where everyone they talk to wants their money. Donors are never told their ideas are dumb, or they’ve waded into subjects they don’t understand, or it’s actually way more complicated than that, or that idea’s been tried a dozen times before and always failed. This is great preparation for calling in favors from United States senators who owe you, but it’s terrible preparation for the actual work of a public official — which involves a lot of tough questions and skeptical audiences and calming of people who are angry or upset.
Republicans are only cheating themselves
When I was in school, teachers often offered a cliché that DeVos may be familiar with, namely that those who cheat in school are at the end of the day only cheating themselves. The various quizzes and tests and homework exercises, after all, are there as assessment tools. The idea is that both you and the teacher need a valid indicator of how well you are doing so that you can improve your performance and learn. Faking your way through the tests may get you a passing grade but it won’t get you actual mastery of the subject matter. And in the broad sweep of life, nobody cares whether you got an A in 11th grade English — but they certainly do care whether you can write a coherent paragraph of English.
By the same token, the superficial appearance that the Senate confirmation process is a gauntlet in which the president and his party “win” if the nominee is confirmed and “lose” if the nomination dies is misleading.
At the end of the day there is going to be an education secretary, and that person is going to be a member of Trump’s administration. It’s in the Republican Party’s interest, more than anyone else, that that person be an effective member of the team. Shielding DeVos’s flaws from public scrutiny by scheduling an unusually brief hearing with limited questions at an odd time works well if your goal is to spare her embarrassment. By the same token, nobody can stop congressional Republicans from hustling Tom Price into office before anyone’s taken a rigorous look at his stock trading. The obviously unqualified Ben Carson seems to be a shoo-in at HUD.
But the GOP is only sabotaging itself by allowing Trump to draft this C-list roster. The president can’t be everywhere simultaneously — an effective Cabinet is how he extends his reach, influences more people, and get more done. Rushing weak candidates through is a good way to put points on the board, but only w
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www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2017/01/18
Trump declares that he’ll give everyone coverage; Republicans explain that he didn’t mean that literally. Congressional Budget Office says the obvious, that repealing the Affordable Care Act would lead to immense hardship for tens of millions; Republicans declare that this is wrong, because they will come up with an alternative any day now — you know, the one they’ve been promising for 7 years.
Providing health care to those previously denied it is, necessarily, a matter of redistributing from the lucky to the unlucky. And, of course, reversing a policy that expanded health care is redistribution in reverse. You can’t make this reality go away.
Left to its own devices, a market economy won’t care for the sick unless they can pay for it; insurance can help up to a point, but insurance companies have no interest in covering people they suspect will get sick. So unfettered markets mean that health care goes only to those who are wealthy and/or healthy enough that they won’t need it often, and hence can get insurance.
If that’s a state of affairs you’re comfortable with, so be it.
Guaranteeing health care comes with a cost. You can tell insurance companies that they can’t discriminate based on medical history, but that means higher premiums for the healthy — and you also create an incentive to stay uninsured until or unless you get sick, which pushes premiums even higher. So you have to regulate individuals as well as insurers, requiring that everyone sign up — the mandate. And since some people won’t be able to obey such a mandate, you need subsidies, which must be paid for out of taxes.
Before the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans could wave all this away by claiming that health reform could never work. And even now they’re busy telling lies about its collapse. But none of this will conceal mass loss of health care in the wake of Obamacare repeal.
What they’re left with is a health economics version of voodoo: they’ll invoke the magic of the market to somehow provide insurance so cheap that everyone will be able to afford it whatever their income and medical status. This is obvious nonsense; I think even Paul Ryan knows that he’s lying like a rug. But it’s all they’ve got.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/health-care-fundamentals/
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'He Is Going to Test Our Democracy as It Has Never Been Tested'
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/john-dean-interview/51321
5/
Why Nixon's former lawyer John Dean worries Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it
He’s profoundly pessimistic about the prospect of Trump facing any true accountability while in office. In the four decades since Nixon resigned, Dean says, the institutions that are meant to keep a president’s power in check—the press, Congress, even the courts—have been rendered increasingly weak and ineffectual by a sort of creeping partisan paralysis.
More broadly, Dean believes the American electorate has become desensitized to political scandal. In the years immediately following Watergate, he said, politicians were on high alert, and so was the public. But since then, that culture of vigilance has so eroded that it’s nearly impossible now to envision a sin so grave, or a revelation so explosive, that it would lead to the ouster of a sitting president.
Add to all this the realities of the current political landscape, and Dean says Trump will almost certainly weather whatever storms he faces during his presidency. “Unless Trump is a such a disaster that the public rises up and changes control of Congress in the mid-term elections, he is very safe.”
In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with [Nixon] where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle.
Unchecked, Dean worries, these neo-Nixonian instincts will only grow stronger once Trump enters the Oval Office—a place where every occupant since Nixon has found new ways to expand his authority and further his reach. “Barack Obama, like most presidents, did not dispose of any of the executive powers he inherited,” Dean said. “Hang on when Trump and his crew fully appreciate the extraordinary powers they will have—it is not only going to be thrilling, but dangerous.”
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Obama's Affordable Care Act was a joke. (And I will be one of the 10's of millions that are affected if we lose it).
What you're accusing Trump of now is exactly what Obama and the Democrats did before him.
I don't know the answer, but I fail to see your point.
My suggestion would be to eliminate health insurance altogether. Let's see how much the hospitals can charge when we can only afford to pay pennies on the dollar compared to what they're used to billing us.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/health-care-all-about-benjamins
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Obama's Affordable Care Act was a joke. . . .
I don't know the answer, but I fail to see your point. . . .
Quote:Most people have no real clue about this, but per-capita health care spending in the US for someone 55 years old is about $10,000 per year. That means insurance premiums are going to be $10,000+ per year too. There's just no getting around this.
When Obamacare first came into effect, I was excited to get what I thought would be financial help with my costly medicine and treatments. But [my husband’s salary] put me in an earning bracket too high to qualify for any financial assistance....I’m left with a premium of $893, so high that I can no longer afford the cost of my medicines and treatments on top of the monthly premiums.
....In the end, I voted for Trump because he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, and that was the most important issue to my own life. Looking back, I realize what a mistake it was. I ignored the pundits who repeated over and over again that he would not follow through on his promises, thinking they were spewing hysterics for better ratings. Sitting on my couch, my mouth agape at the words coming out Trump's mouth on the TV before me, I realized just how wrong I was.
If Republicans want to better cover people, they're going to have to spend more money than Obamacare. If they want to reduce deductibles, they're going to have to spend more money than Obamacare. If they want to increase subsidies for the middle class, they're going to have to spend more money than Obamacare. This is an iron law, and no amount of blather about state lines or tort reform or anything else changes it more than minutely. But Republicans want to spend less, not more.
It all comes down to money. Ignore the rest of the chaff. If you think national health care should be better, it means spending more money. Period.
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