**President Trump 2018 Thread**

[Soxbadger]

Just now, GoSox05 said:

I think this was the only time Russia/Ukraine and U.S have had a treaty.  So I guess none.

So sanctions on Russia.  Then what?

 Until they return Ukraine we pressure our allies to sanction Russia until they are ground to dust.

You dont let a foreign power break a treaty like this. 

[GoSox05]

Just now, Soxbadger said:

 Until they return Ukraine we pressure our allies to sanction Russia until they are ground to dust.

You dont let a foreign power break a treaty like this. 

What about just invading other countries?  How do you feel about that?

Is that worthy of sanctions?

[Soxbadger]

Just now, GoSox05 said:

What about just invading other countries?  How do you feel about that?

Is that worthy of sanctions?

 

Youd have to be more specific because I dont think you can generally answer that question. 

[StrangeSox]

2 hours ago, GoSox05 said:

All things that this country has done in the past.  In fact we have literally overthrown democratically elected officials. 

Kinda hard to criticize Russia for the same things we do.

porque no los dos?

[GoSox05]

Just now, Soxbadger said:

 

Youd have to be more specific because I dont think you can generally answer that question. 

America is currently selling arms to Saudi Arabia as they are killing thousands of people in Yemen and causing starvation.  Should America be "ground into dust" for that?

What about invading Iraq and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.  Do we get "ground into dust" for that?

Or is it only bad if a treaty is broken?

[Soxbadger]

1 minute ago, GoSox05 said:

America is currently selling arms to Saudi Arabia as they are killing thousands of people in Yemen and causing starvation.  Should America be "ground into dust" for that?

What about invading Iraq and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.  Do we get "ground into dust" for that?

Or is it only bad if a treaty is broken?

If other countries would like to sanction the US for what they perceive as wrongdoings by the US, they are fully within their rights. But its not comparable to what Russia did, because the US had no treaty with Iraq, Yemen, etc where we agreed to certain rules. 

But as far as I can tell, there is not a current comparable situation where the US signed a treaty and then broke that treaty. Perhaps you can find one, but I personally believe that the US has to enforce the treaties that we sign and that we have to protect the countries that we sign treaties to protect.

 

[Brian]

Looks like they tried putting Stormy behind bars on a obscure law but it's been dismissed.

Hard to believe she wasn't harassed with her kid years ago like she says now.

[illinilaw08]

21 minutes ago, LittleHurt05 said:

Besides the for profit issue, I also think the direct link to employment is crazy, and that's even if you ignore the small business aspect of it.  You can work for Mega Corp A, I work for Mega Corp B doing the exact same job.  You could have a $500 deductible plan to every PPO network, while I have a $10,000 deductible limited HMO plan.  And I have no choice but to accept it, I can't really even shop for any other plans.  My health is directly related to my employer's preference and budget.

I agree with this point as well.  And it's not as easy to just change jobs to one that has better benefits as some legislators would like you to believe.

For the record, I work for a small law firm that has absolutely spectacular health benefits - and I recognize just how lucky that I am to have that.

[GoSox05]

8 minutes ago, Soxbadger said:

If other countries would like to sanction the US for what they perceive as wrongdoings by the US, they are fully within their rights. But its not comparable to what Russia did, because the US had no treaty with Iraq, Yemen, etc where we agreed to certain rules. 

But as far as I can tell, there is not a current comparable situation where the US signed a treaty and then broke that treaty. Perhaps you can find one, but I personally believe that the US has to enforce the treaties that we sign and that we have to protect the countries that we sign treaties to protect.

 

Just one last thing, what does "ground them into dust" even mean?

Edited July 12, 2018 by GoSox05

[StrangeSox]

3 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

Just one last thing, what does "ground them into dust" even mean?

 

[Soxbadger]

2 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

Just one last thing, what does "ground them into dust" even mean?

Destroy their economy until they are forced to abide by the treaty.

[Dick Allen]

North Korea is a no show at the meeting to discuss returning American remains. Looks like KJU isn't too high on a Trump hotel at his beach.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Dick Allen

[Dick Allen]

Also, who would have know, but Ivanka's clothes aren't getting hit with tariffs. As of early 2017, all of her line made outside of USA.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Dick Allen

[LittleHurt05]

27 minutes ago, Soxbadger said:

Sounds like you think they should create some sort exchange for individuals so that individuals can get better rates and not be reliant on their employer...

 

Well played.

If only the current exchange actually had coverage worth a damn, but that doesn't make profit for the private companies, so we are back to where we started.

 

[Soxbadger]

2 hours ago, LittleHurt05 said:

Well played.

If only the current exchange actually had coverage worth a damn, but that doesn't make profit for the private companies, so we are back to where we started.

 

Not going to say that the exchange couldnt be improved. But I will say, why not work to improve it so that we can all get good affordable healthcare and dont have to feel like slaves to our employers?

I know that this will never fly with Republicans, but it seems like that is a worthwhile goal. 

[Balta1701]

5 minutes ago, Soxbadger said:

Not going to say that the exchange couldnt be improved. But I will say, why not work to improve it so that we can all get good affordable healthcare and dont have to feel like slaves to our employers?

I know that this will never fly with Republicans, but it seems like that is a worthwhile goal. 

You still have several big issues. First of all, since so many people's health care is already tied to their employer, if you try to break that tie, you're forcing literally everyone to switch health care providers and insurance and everyone already knows that dealing with what should be easy insurance questions wastes a week of everyone's time, so no one wants to do that (hence why the previous President said the If you like your insurance you can keep it line).

And second...health care is still this completely screwed up market where almost all the costs are endured for a very small group of people, the ones who are truly chronically ill. In Iowa, there's one patient in their exchange who costs $10 million per year to keep alive, so the incentive to not be stuck as the company footing that bill is huge. So, the only thing you can rely on is bargaining power of a large group; the insurer can cut their costs and give discounts in exchange for 20,000 employees being insured because they can still count on cheaper folks to balance out the expensive one if they get unlucky. The exchanges were an attempt to take the individuals who were getting screwed and sell them all as a group the same way, with the trade-off that people were penalized if they didn't buy things. So even if you wanted to break the employer link, you run into trouble because you no longer have that same bargaining power or dilution of the expensive folks.

[StrangeSox]

here is how you improve it:

 

abolish private insurers, Medicare 4 All, bing bing bong pretty simple

[Balta1701]

19 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

here is how you improve it:

 

abolish private insurers, Medicare 4 All, bing bing bong pretty simple

Note that this does not solve issue #1, and it brings in the other major issue of how many people are going to lose millions of dollars. Hence, it's one of those very difficult political ones, because it may provide everyone some benefit, but it provides a substantial group of people huge losses, and those people will invest anything they can to protect that.

[Dick Allen]

DOJ appears  AT&T Time Warner merger ruling. Probably kills the deal. Judge told them not to, probably just Trump showing CNN who is the boss. 

[Balta1701]

4 hours ago, GoSox05 said:

Nope, but it's hard to criticize other countries for something that you are also doing to other countries. 

Also, to what extent Russia interfered in our election is arguable.  Putting up a few million dollars to run fake ads on Facebook isn't worthy to invade them. 

 

Just so someone replies to this, they broke into the email system of a single political party and, with the help of a willing press and a Republican Party more than happy to send out press releases about the content, turned that into one of the biggest stories of the entire election. It was used at the Presidential level, it was used at the Congressional level. The Republicans used the content of those emails to plan their ad buys in some cases since they included demographic  and voter outreach information. They attacked and breached several state voter databases, to what extent we currently don't know, and it is absolutely known that they attacked voting machines as well, although at present we don't know of any cases where they were able to break through enough to change results (in some cases there may still be reason for concern, people have said systems were attacked and they haven't denied that they could have been breached).

They didn't just run fake ads on Facebook, they created fake groups, used the tools of those networks (twitter included) - in Tennessee a Russian controlled group pretending to be the state Republican Party actually had more US followers than the actual state Republican party. They organized protests and events. They created memes and pushed those around - not just advertising, but a huge amount of content pushed forwards. They were able to target this material by illegally accessing user profiles through Cambridge Analytica's work, breaking FB's rules to do so and getting personal information on over 100 million US residents. 

This was a major attack. They compromised computer systems, broke laws all over the country, and took advantage of weak regulations on social media networks to push that content even farther forwards. 

On top of all that, they had the campaign manager on one of the two major candidates actually on their payroll, they had compromised the US National Security Advisor, and there's a very good chance they actually have similarly corrupted the President of the United States, who also just happens to keep leaking classified intelligence to them and acting on behalf of them in negotiations with other countries. 

And that's what we know about before Mueller's investigation pulls out anything big.

[StrangeSox]

10 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Note that this does not solve issue #1, and it brings in the other major issue of how many people are going to lose millions of dollars. Hence, it's one of those very difficult political ones, because it may provide everyone some benefit, but it provides a substantial group of people huge losses, and those people will invest anything they can to protect that.

issue #1 in inevitable though and on the other side would be a much less byzantine system. Go to the doctor, get a minimal bill if any at all, no bullshit in-network/out-of-network co-pay deductible HSA FSA blah blah blah

And yes obviously the second part is "this is not easy politically" which is why we didn't get the public option in 2010, thank you very much Mr. Lieberman (and every Republican).

[StrangeSox]

4 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

DOJ appears  AT&T Time Warner merger ruling. Probably kills the deal. Judge told them not to, probably just Trump showing CNN who is the boss. 

DOJ actually enforcing antitrust laws for a change is good imo.

[Balta1701]

3 minutes ago, raBBit said:

I don't really go to Nancy Pelosi for my information.

LOL so you went to Factcheck.org, saw that it was checking a Pelosi quote, and didn't bother actually to read literally anything more of the article? There's like 10 peer reviewed articles cited in that piece alone.

[Soxbadger]

7 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

LOL so you went to Factcheck.org, saw that it was checking a Pelosi quote, and didn't bother actually to read literally anything more of the article? There's like 10 peer reviewed articles cited in that piece alone.

Well the real irony is that they are actually investigating if what Pelosi said is false.

Its the exact opposite of getting their information from her. 

But I mean, its also bad reporting if CNN calls people about Jim Jordan to try and verify a story. Instead they should just write things like "Jim Jordan wont take a lie detector test" or "Jim Jordan cant prove that he didnt see boys raped."

[illinilaw08]

16 minutes ago, raBBit said:

I don't really go to Nancy Pelosi for my information.

Seriously, dude.  Balta and SB already hit on this, so this is probably piling on, but my post literally mentioned that the article cites to, and provides links to, studies on the subject.  Did you think Nancy Pelosi conducted all those studies?