monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@TomTomBinks,

TomTomBinks wrote:

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Hooray for capitalism and free enterprise.

...and goodbye to radio with quality content!

NPR is and always will be a wasteland of liberal propaganda.

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@giujohn,

giujohn wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

I am making no claim, but pointing out that "sending in the Feds" is something his predecessor was fond of and need not get anyone's panties in a twist.

He can't send in the US Military and the National Guard is not federal.

There are probably legal grounds for sending FBI agents in and they could take control of the operations, but that would hardly be the same as sending in an army of federal policing entities and, in any case, I doubt they will be carrying bayonets.

I'm going to disagree with on this one Finn. The president of confederal as the National Guard and send them into Chicago to quell the gang violence. There is precedent for it. If he was descending federal law enforcement it would not be the FBI it would most likely be a contingent of Federal Marshals. There's also precedent for that.

Damn auto correct...That should say can federalize the national guard.
And sorry layman...Didn't see your post til after I sent this one.

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@hightor,

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Oh, you're confusing some statement in a 4 year old video with actual policy.

Nothing really happens overnight, it happens in steps. Policy wise, you can look at the ACA as the first steps. When the started to fail in it's promises, as we all pointed out that it would, there was already the siren song of the Public option starting to be sung. In the realm of Health Insurance, we started with little regulation and moved to more and more regulation over health insurance/healthcare, until it cultivated into a mandate to the people. Remember, if you don't have insurance you have to pay a fee, I mean a fine, I mean a tax... to the IRS. What was the next step after the ACA? According to those on the left and a few in the center, it's the public option, which gets rid of health insurance companies, which is the aim of those on the left.

The march toward govt owned and controlled healthcare was stopped, had Hillary or Bernie won, that is the direction we were headed towards, and it was started by Obama, the Dems and the ACA.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

@wmwcjr,
Nice to see you.

Thank you.

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Looks like things are heating up between United States and Mexico... Mexican American War?

Hell, before we start worrying about Chicago, maybe we should send troops to take over Mexico. Stop all the drugs, guns, criminals and terroists from coming to our country, eliminate all the drug gangs and cartels in Mexico, and make it a u.s. territory. Hell we couldn't do any worse running that country than they have.

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@Baldimo,

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In the realm of Health Insurance, we started with little regulation and moved to more and more regulation over health insurance/healthcare, until it cultivated into a mandate to the people.

Baldimo, lots of anti-ACA people talk as if everything was just perfect before but the reality is that many people could not afford health insurance, many of the affordable policies were ****, and health savings account beyond the reach of most low income people. You know all this but I'll say it anyway — using hospital emergency rooms as a substitute for an insurance policy was inefficient and overly expensive. The Heritage Foundation devised a plan for universal care based on mandated private insurance and Romney instituted something similar in Massachusetts. The ACA, while not identical, was based on this model. It was assumed that most people actually wanted health insurance.

Single-payer would have been a huge disruption in the health insurance market. But the USA is the only advanced society that relies on private insurance companies. Other than avoiding the tumult of switching to a "medicare-for-all" system , why is our system (either the ACA or what we had previously) so superior? Why is this the only way of providing affordable coverage to the largest amount of people? Why is the inevitable occurrence of sickness and death something that corporations should make a profit on?

I just don't consider the fine for non-payment a big deal. A lot of the guys I work with are happy to pay it because it costs less than insurance. The only people I've met who are hurt by the ACA are people who are too wealthy to qualify for a subsidy but not really wealthy enough to spend $18,000 a year on a policy. But one healthy friend who grumbled about having to buy insurance was discovered to have a rare form of eye cancer and had to go to a specialist in a city 300 miles away for a series of operations. Needless to say he was very relieved to have had the coverage. (His prognosis is good, too.)

I honestly don't understand the current antipathy to "gummint", as if it were some single overarching entity bent on eventual enslavement of the population. The fact is, ensuring the welfare and security of over 300 million people requires many networks of oversight and regulation. Fees and taxes are a small price to pay for roads, bridges, tunnels, weather satellites, schools, armies, space travel, clean water, safe food, law enforcement, salaries of civil servants — on and on. I think the way taxes are collected could be improved but I don't see us ever getting rid of them, oppressive or not.

One question — what church do you belong to? Do you feel as if that church
"owns" you? If you belong to the Republican Party, does it "own" you? I didn't think so. It's possible to "belong" to an organization without being the property of that organization.

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@blatham,

I read your linked WP article re State Dept. resignations.. Your brief characterization was incorrect in several important areas. It's likely that a large fraction of those who left did so because they believed they would be asked to leave by thre new administration - Kennedy and his aides are prime examples. As to the others the article was very thin on specifics, but ample in speculation.

I suspect for the most part they have done the incoming Secretary a favor. Hard to imagine someone who has learned to thrive under someone like John Kerry doing well under someone like Rex Tillerson.

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@giujohn,

giujohn wrote:

Hell, before we start worrying about Chicago, maybe we should send troops to take over Mexico. Stop all the drugs, guns, criminals and terroists from coming to our country, eliminate all the drug gangs and cartels in Mexico, and make it a u.s. territory. Hell we couldn't do any worse running that country than they have.

But then there wouldn't be any country to run. If you take all the murders, rapists, and drug cartels out of Mexico, there wouldn't be anyone left to govern.

I like your idea, though. We would then have a lot more territory for our people to expand into. I think Hitler called it "Lebensraum."

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

I read your linked WP article re State Dept. resignations.. Your brief characterization was incorrect in several important areas. It's likely that a large fraction of those who left did so because they believed they would be asked to leave by thre new administration - Kennedy and his aides are prime examples.

Yeah, seems rather obvious, don't it, George. That very article also says the following:

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Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed....The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service.

A guy who has been busy "angling to keep his job" suddenly resigns? What's that tellya?

Tells me they demanded his resignation, notwithstanding his protests, know what I'm sayin?

As usual, Blathy will only accept the conclusions presented by a biased reporter, while ignoring the facts actually reported, when he posts the **** he does.

He just reads the first paragraph to see if it has been construed in such a manner as to seemingly discredit Trump. If so, it gets posted here, Pronto.

In this case the characterization of the story (given before the story itself, of course) was:

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

"Don't want to stick round," see? "Mass exodus," got it? "considerably more difficult." can't ya see?

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@layman,

Many government bureaucracies appear to be having hissyfits over the prospect of a Trump presidency. I have some regular contact with the EPA folks on the West Coast - they were all convinced that all contract actions of any sort were indefinately suspended, at a time when it was obvious, even to me, that the only things affected were grants to states and favored research institutes (a rather inward looking and, if not overtly corruput, certainly a venal and thoroughly bureaucratized affair. Now a few days later they are still breathlessly noting that the sky did not actually fall in, and work is continuing as usual.

Even in the DOD I remember the essence of bureaucratric politics was, whenever you get either a budget cut or direction from above to do something you don't want to do, your first action is to cut whatever activity the supervising authority appeared to value most. I suspect that was a factor here.

After a few bureaucratic heads roll their listening skills usually return.

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@georgeob1,

I'm a fiscal conservative, and believe our governments waste a lot of money that can be used more efficiently and for better purposes. However, as well all know, congress controls the purse strings, and there's nothing we can do about that. I don't worry about budget issues, because congress will do what they do; waste money.

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@hightor,

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Baldimo, lots of anti-ACA people talk as if everything was just perfect before but the reality is that many people could not afford health insurance, many of the affordable policies were ****, and

Do you consider shitty policies anything that didn't contain the ACA minimum 10 coverage's?

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health savings account beyond the reach of most low income people.

Unless you have money to put into a HSA, it is outside the reach of most people that are low income or even mid-income. I have had access to an HSA or similar plans, with almost every employer insurance I have ever had, but I've never used it, I didn't have the "extra" money and didn't have a reason for it. There is nothing special about HSA, it's your own money, I've never seen a matching HSA and I don't think they exist.

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Single-payer would have been a huge disruption in the health insurance market. But the USA is the only advanced society that relies on private insurance companies. Other than avoiding the tumult of switching to a "medicare-for-all" system , why is our system (either the ACA or what we had previously) so superior?

I didn't say it was better, but it worked for the majority of us those in the US who already had insurance. I don't care what other countries are doing, they don't have to deal with a population as large as the US. The rest of the "advanced" countries in the world have a fraction of our population. Germany who is the closest has 80 million, we have 350 million. The countries that are touted the most as good examples have the population of some of our largest cities. So what works for their small population won't work for our large population.

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Why is this the only way of providing affordable coverage to the largest amount of people?

We have a mixed system of coverage, public and private. It works for the vast majority, why do we change the entire system for a minority of people? Instead we should be working with the system we have and working on solutions, not flipping it on it's head. I'm not saying the whole ACA was bad, there were good portions that could have and should have been passed on their own, not as part of a mass mandate.

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Why is the inevitable occurrence of sickness and death something that corporations should make a profit on?

Corporations? Why don't you ask doctors and nurses to make less? After all, why should they profit from providing care and services to patients. My sister has been a nurse for over 20 years, she makes close to $40hr, depending on the shift she works, should she make less money or no money for the services she provides? If you ask me, she should be paid more, she is in a skilled job with many years of experience, where the demand is high for good people.

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A lot of the guys I work with are happy to pay it because it costs less than insurance.

Those guys you work with are one of the reasons why the ACA was doomed to fail from the start. They are the healthy people who were suppose to buy the plans that funded the whole deal. You wonder why the numbers show so many people who are still not insured? Look at your work buddies...

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The only people I've met who are hurt by the ACA are people who are too wealthy to qualify for a subsidy but not really wealthy enough to spend $18,000 a year on a policy.

I see you dismiss the entire segment of the market who gets their plans from their employer. We also saw price increases and larger than those people you mention above. I didn't qualify for a subside on the CO exchange and my employers contribution couldn't be transferred to the exchange. The plans on the exchange were no match for the plans I was offered through my job. The plans only slightly changed, but the costs in the first year doubled from the previous year and have only increased since then.

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But one healthy friend who grumbled about having to buy insurance was discovered to have a rare form of eye cancer and had to go to a specialist in a city 300 miles away for a series of operations. Needless to say he was very relieved to have had the coverage. (His prognosis is good, too.)

Happy to hear your friend is ok. Does he have coverage via the exchange or his employer?

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I honestly don't understand the current antipathy to "gummint", as if it were some single overarching entity bent on eventual enslavement of the population.

You think people being upset by the govt is something new? There is nothing new under the sun.

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The fact is, ensuring the welfare and security of over 300 million people requires many networks of oversight and regulation. Fees and taxes are a small price to pay for roads, bridges, tunnels, weather satellites, schools, armies, space travel, clean water, safe food, law enforcement, salaries of civil servants — on and on. I think the way taxes are collected could be improved but I don't see us ever getting rid of them, oppressive or not.

The question remains. How much of all of that is actually the responsibility of the govt. We differ on those responsibilities, but I don't think the majority of people want no taxes, they want lower taxes. There are over 170 social services offered across all levels of govt here in the US, lets play the Goldie Locks game... To little, to many or just right?

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One question — what church do you belong to? Do you feel as if that church"owns" you?

I don't believe in Jesus Christ so I don't belong to a church. In fact I don't belong to any religion or any house of worship. To be honest, I'm not even sure about God, but I don't think our existence is a trick of chance either.

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If you belong to the Republican Party, does it "own" you? I didn't think so.

As of 2012, I've been a registered Libertarian but I don't even buy into the full thoughts of that group either.

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It's possible to "belong" to an organization without being the property of that organization.

Agreed on principle, but it isn't so simple. I think the military goes against this concept as well as playing for a sports team or working for a political party or group, but more generalized I think you are correct.

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@layman,

Yeah, just think about all the new beachfront property!

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I'm a fiscal conservative, and believe our governments waste a lot of money that can be used more efficiently and for better purposes. However, as well all know, congress controls the purse strings, and there's nothing we can do about that. I don't worry about budget issues, because congress will do what they do; waste money.

The excess funds are voted by the Congress, but the wastes occur in the various bureaucracies. Roughly 4% of government employees are union "shop stewards" who do no work for the government. A very large fraction of government employees spend their time overseeing the contractors who do their work and write their reports for them. It's a system built on waste.

Eight years ago we did have some level of Congressional oversight of the bureaucracies, however that ended with the demise of the former regular budget order under Obama and Harry Reid. Instead of Congressionally examined and approved budgets our government has functioned under mere continuing resolutions for most of the past eight years.

My impressions from the small parts of government I can see are that the bureaucrats are quite terrified over the prospect of being actually held accountable for what they have done (or not done) by the new Administration. They find the prospect truly horrifying and are quite indignant about it.

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@georgeob1,

That's exactly what I mean; we have no say or control on what congress does. Why worry about things we have no control over? Most voters reelect their reps without much knowledge or understanding of our government.
We just elected a racial bigot as the leader of the free world. Hopeless.
Mexicans are criminals and rapists, he's going to deport all illegals, Muslims will be banned from entering our country, and he will not rent to blacks.

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@cicerone imposter,

I don't agree, we do have control of Congress via our elections. I'll readily concede that California has a lamentable habit of reelecting a generally sad collection of Democrrat Congressmen,however thatr is not the norm nationwide where the electoral turnover is more substantial.

The inertia of the various government bureaucracies is far less controllable and controlled by citrizens. Increasingly we are substituting bureaucratic regulation for new democratically approved legislation - a very harmful trend in my view.

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Quote:

“That speech was a home run, see what Fox said. They said it was one of the great speeches. They showed the people applauding and screaming. … I got a standing ovation. In fact, they said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl, and they said it was equal. I got a standing ovation. It lasted for a long period of time. I know when I do good speeches. I know when I do bad speeches. That speech was a total home run. They loved it. … People loved it. They loved it. They gave me a standing ovation for a long period of time. They never even sat down, most of them, during the speech. There was love in the room.”

Oh. I see.

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@ehBeth,

I don't know either because he's a pretty perfect distraction to hold attention while they do their deeds and, in the manner you suggest, he's compliant because of who he is and what he does and doesn't cares about.

If he can maintain emotional stability and if he doesn't start to see them as an enemy and if his unfavorability doesn't fall further, this can continue. But I'm not sure those things will stay in place.

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@georgeob1,

I agree; much of what the liberals have done were shoved down our throats regardless of their cost. Something has to give when our deficit continues to grow. The time for free lunches is long past, but our government has lost control over spending without the revenue.

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@blatham,

My first reaction is 'good for them'. On the other hand, there could be a new sluice of alt-ies showing up in those spots. On the other hand, the faster they come, the harder they fall. Or, we fall.

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