Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888711488717934592[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888724194820857857[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888726438265966592[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888730468732067841[/ame]

[Ghengis Jon]

Hillary who? We're talking about you, dipshit.

[CGVT]

Too bad the Trumpsters eat that shit up. They somehow think "But...Hillary" is a legitimate excuse for this jackass. Trump is an idiot, but he is not stupid. He knows that as long as he can rail on Hillary, a large, dumbass segment of the people will nod their heads in knowing agreement.

[WM Wolverine]

Don't underestimate the rabidness of his loyal, racist and uneducated base.

[hack]

If democracy's death is by a thousand cuts, Trump took office with the polity already having sustained quite a few of them. Since the Nixon impeachment, as a healing event, we've had plenty of slashes. Trump's already contributed a few of his own and is on pace to do more damage than anyone else but Cheney in the post-Nixon era. But if he fires Mueller, that's no small cut. Counts as a few dozen at least. Just threatening to without any cause other than his own self-interest is a cut. How much further to go to 1,000?

[Ghengis Jon]

The really, really horrifying aspect of this administration is that Chump is going to eventually make all of America (except the lock step Trumpanzees) long for a typical career politician in the WH. Ugh.

Spicer gone after 6 months, will Tillerson last a year? Evidently, Rex is none to happy about Chump continuing to be Putin's cock holster and his utter disregard for the intelligence community. The SoS has tried to convince Chump that attempted Russian meddling does not delegitimize the election, but the hallucinator-in-chief continues to be anchored in some alternate reality.

If there's ever a docudrama done of the current administration, I recommend that it be entitled Buffoon In The High Castle.

[Wild Hoss]

Agree with the last two posts, but we have to remember that Trump is a symptom, not the cause.

Hyper-partisanship is the device that allows the behavior of our politicians to deteriorate, and erase lines that we never believed would be crossed. You can excuse anything if you believe there is nothing worse than the people on the other side.

[froot loops]

I'm sure partisanship can shoulder a lot of blame, but I think the main culprit is reality TV. A big slice of the population thinks he is a great businessman. Ultimately if he fires Mueller or tries to start pardoning people the bottom will fall out. I have faith the republic will endure this clown.

I'm not opposed to a career politician occupying the oval office, hopefully someone with governing experience. I think it is Easy Button thinking to believe some novice person is going to get elected to the highest office and it will change something. As we are seeing now the novice gets worked over by the career politicians. But every 4 years we are treated to siren song of the businessman going to Washington. Normally that is stopped before it's too late, not this time.

[Wild Hoss]

I'm sure partisanship can shoulder a lot of blame, but I think the main culprit is reality TV. A big slice of the population thinks he is a great businessman. Ultimately if he fires Mueller or tries to start pardoning people the bottom will fall out. I have faith the republic will endure this clown.

I'm not opposed to a career politician occupying the oval office, hopefully someone with governing experience. I think it is Easy Button thinking to believer some novice person is going to get elected to the highest office and it will change something. As we are seeing now the novice gets worked over by the career politicians. But every 4 years we are treated to siren song of the businessman going to Washington. Normally that is stopped before it's too late, not this time.

I think you can follow the root problem further down the rabbit hole than hyper-partisanship or Reality TV, and maybe pin it on mass communication in general. We start veering off into sociology or psychology here perhaps, but thanks to mass media, politics is everywhere, all the time now; every issue is a political one anymore, seemingly.

As a result, people seem to self-identify with political affiliations nowadays...and nothing good comes from adding ego to the equation. Then, for me to be right, you have to be wrong. For me to be good, you have to be bad. We were better off when we didn?t know what we all thought about politics.

[iam416]

Finally found out the answer to one of my questions for DSL:

According to the CBO, of the 22 million fewer people who will have health insurance in 2026 under the Senate bill, 16 million will voluntarily drop out of the market because they will no longer face a financial penalty for doing so: 73 percent of the total.

So, 6M people will actually LOSE their insurance by 2026. Whether that's acceptable or not is up for debate, but that's at least what should be debated.

[froot loops]

Do you have a link to that Talent? I thought the CBO arrived at that figure because the lack of a mandate had created the 15 million pooling the direct(young people) and indirect (old sick people who would face rising premiums).

[iam416]

Froot:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/07/22/cbo-three-fourths-of-coverage-difference-between-obamacare-gop-bills-driven-by-individual-mandate/#2da7d1b43627

It's Forbes, so usually I have to click on it once -- get a splash page -- go back, then re-click and I get to the article.

[froot loops]

I'd be careful with Avik Roy's analysis, it is tbought tbat he had a silent hand in crafting the Senate bill. Here is another data point in the analysis of that Senate bill. i have no idea who this blog is affiliated with buyer beware.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/06/26/cbo-projects-that-22-million-would-lose-coverage-under-senate-bill/

[iam416]

Well, right -- it's not necessarily trusting his analysis -- it's trusting whether the "leaked" information is real. Pretty ballsy of him to make it up, but certainly possible.

In any event, the number strikes me quite possible.

[THE_WIZARD_]

TRUMP IS DA DEBIL!