Donald Trump and US politics

I get the feeling you just walked head on into a trap, BPC.

Be prepared to make a long post explaining context, circumstance, agenda, long term goals and concessions made because of party opposition. In short, the difference between 'you may have to make this choice because that's the best we can get for you right now' and 'you will have to make this choice because that's how we want it'.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

So wait, it was the CIA who hacked Clinton's emails?

Wat.

No, really, I'm curious. What's the logic here? Our intelligence agencies hacked Clinton and released massive amounts of harmful, one-sided information on her, then pinned it on Russia in an attempt to link it to Trump, lying to Obama in the process, and pissing off literally everyone involved in the chain of command on both sides of the aisle? That somehow makes more sense to you than "Russian hackers with a clear motive (get Donald Trump elected) acted by their usual MO - find dirt on an opponent, and release said dirt at politically opportune time". I'm not entirely sure why.

Look the face William of Ockham is making! He is clearly disappointed!

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

He claims that there's no evidence that these tools were used on US citizens, or inappropriately in general.

What is the difference between these tools and wire-taping? Isn't just a "high-tech wire-taping", they still need the approval from the DOJ to use those tools right? I get it that people tend to be scared of "new things", but as long those "new things" aren't abused they don't scare me that much.

Once I've heard a conspiracy theory saying that the NSA was gathering data using people's cameras while they played Pokemon GO(absurd), and the first thing I thought was: DUDE, that is a lot of mostly useless data, that people probably won't have any time to analyze. Now if we also take those things in consideration I don't even know how it would be possible for them to gather all this data without someone finding out.

I kinda want to talk about the current Republican health care plan (who would have guessed that it does a whole lot less to help the poor and has a whopping big tax cut for the rich, except literally anyone with pattern recognition skills?), but given that there are enough republicans in the senate who consider the bill too conservative and enough who consider it too liberal to sink the bill, and there is very likely not much reconciling those two groups, chances of this actually passing are slim to none, so the only real value is showing where the priorities of the republicans lies, and how abysmal they are at their job. They had six years to work on that whole "repeal and replace" thing, and this is the best they can come up with? Should've spent less time on protest votes and more time doing your damn jobs, fellas.

The poorest people will be subsidized. Like people with little to no income won't be left hanging. Liberals are acting like everyone who's poor just isn't gonna be covered. Just like they lie to elderly people every election and tell them Republicans are going to take away their Social Security benefits.

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SarahAustin wrote:

Less people are being covered under Trumpcare. Thats a fact.

No, that's not a fact. And you're claiming this before the final plan has even been decided. Some people who are getting it for free now could afford to pay something into the system. Which means they'll get covered most likely, even if it's not completely subsidized. And people who don't want/need health insurance, like healthy people in their 20s aren't gonna pay for it. Counting people who don't want coverage as a "lost" number would be erroneous, but that's typical Democrat MO.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Ironically, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that Russia is going to love these revelations. As Fred Kaplan put it:

Funny how the demorats are so worried about Russia. Russia this, russia that. Wikileaks bad! Assange bad! War good! It's like the left suddenly cares more about Russia scoring some PR points, than about the Gestapo-level governmental spying programs under Obama. :))

But during the Bush years the left was so different: Wikileaks good! Assange hero! War bad! Patriot act bad!

haha, hypocrites.

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

The poorest people will be subsidized. Like people with little to no income won't be left hanging.

A comparison of subsidies:



So Trumpcare subsidizes considerably less, and does less to account for regional pricing differences or differences in incomes, instead giving money based on age. It also completely removes the medicaid expansion that many relied on, and jeapordizes the funding for the program by making it a block grant. I'm sure the poorest will be subsidized, but will they actually be able to get health care? It's a legitimate question, particularly given that the replacement for the individual mandate (that thing that ensured that people didn't just buy into health insurance only when they got sick) will actually incentivize people to stay off insurance until they absolutely need it.

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Liberals are acting like everyone who's poor just isn't gonna be covered. Just like they lie to elderly people every election and tell them Republicans are going to take away their Social Security benefits.

Well it's not like privatizing social security and medicare haven't been on Paul Ryan's agenda for quite some time now. And it's not like the republicans didn't try this back in '05 (the plan was dropped after massive public outcry). But looking at this bill, my statement was entirely accurate. It does a lot less to help the poor, and it offers the rich a nice bonus. Case in point:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/06/gop-s-bill-includes-tax-deduction-for-insurance-ceos.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl

The law removes a regulation introduced by Obamacare that made it so that insurance companies could not deduct executive pay above $500,000 from their taxes. Interestingly, unless I'm looking at the wrong document, this is literally on the very first page of the bill. What the fuck is the point of this? Do we want to encourage companies to overpay their executives? What the hell is this doing in the healthcare bill? Why is it the very first thing in the legislature? Why the fuck, after making such a big deal about needing to cut corners and cut medicaid because we're spending too much, are we just giving money away to those who most certainly don't need it?

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morbo wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Ironically, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that Russia is going to love these revelations. As Fred Kaplan put it:

Funny how the demorats are so worried about Russia. Russia this, russia that. Wikileaks bad! Assange bad! War good!

Who is calling for war against Russia, exactly? Names and datestamps, please. And yeah, Wikileaks and Assange seem to have become more than a little bit politically motivated.

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It's like the left suddenly cares more about Russia scoring some PR points, than about the Gestapo-level governmental spying programs under Obama. :))

This is a more valid complaint. To which I say: you do realize we can do multiple things at once, right? Yeah, it's good we know about these things. But the way Wikileaks made this release puts these tools in the hands of the public. That's really really bad.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Who is calling for war against Russia, exactly? Names and datestamps, please. And yeah, Wikileaks and Assange seem to have become more than a little bit politically motivated.

No one is calling for war with Russia in those exact words. But who are the anti-russian warmongers, it should be pretty obvious, unless you were sleeping in the past ~6 years. Its funny how well Obama, Hillary and McCain went along, during the previous governemnt, when the subject was wars and "regime changes".

With your second statement you are just proving my point. When your political side is exposed and suffers from leaks, you are all trying to shut down the messenger, instead of focusing on the message. "Liberal" media will shift focus on Russia and other smoke-screen stuff, instead of talking about taxpayer money being used to develop better software to spy on the same taxpayers.

Guess why you wont see any "antifa" or "liberals", who are supposedly against fascism, protesting en-masse in front of Obama's house? ;)