Republicans would have been saying the same thing about Obama's stuff being BLOCKED eight years ago and throughout his presidency. It's a system that is designed to make everything stay the same forever.
Republicans would have been saying the same thing about Obama's stuff being BLOCKED eight years ago and throughout his presidency. It's a system that is designed to make everything stay the same forever.
The Yanks obsession with military spending is bizarre to me. They already have the best 'defence' in the world, many, many times over. Yet, what they have is of very little use in modern - Guerrilla - warfare. Billionsof Dollars on self flying planes that fire self firing rockets and they still can't do fuck all about an Afghan chucking his 1980's AK47 in a hedge and saying he's just one of the locals. Give it up lads.
Largest employer in the world, need to keep all those people occupied somehow.
Make them all YouTube celebrities or something else equally as pointless.
I thought the largest two employers in the world were (in order), the Indian railways, and Our NHS.
The internet thinks you are wrong, but I haven't counted them myself
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/...est-employers/
It’s often said that Indian Railways is the largest employer of people in the world, and if not Indian Railways, then the UK’s National Health Service.
Neither employer can take the top spot, however, which in fact goes to the US Department of Defense, which can claim over 3.2 million employees on its roster.
Indian Railways in fact lands in the number 8 spot, with a 1.4 million-strong workforce, and the NHS is in position 5 with 1.7 million employees.
Recent thoughts:
- The recent budget cave is sickening...but perhaps very strategic. I think the GOP wants to get through a few 'signature' pieces of legislation before they go balls to the wall with funding, they want people to be upset for a week and then move on without it becoming a material issue in the eyes of the average voter. Healthcare was a big win today, so maybe they want to knock out tax reform and immigration related reforms before attacking the budget. That way they can feasibly claim 'we are the party of governing' and claim an upper hand in the messaging war and fingering pointing that inevitably follows any government shutdown.
- The Obamacare repeal going through the house, even if optically, is a huge huge win for the White House and conservatives; I'm proud of Paul Ryan and I think he gets a lot of unwarranted flak. He genuinely seems like he's doing the best he can given the circumstances, and he only has so much room to maneuver. It's important that the only No's came from the moderate RINO crowd. Who knows what the final bill will look like after it goes through the Senate, and even in it's current form it's not going to be popular, but I'm proud of Republicans for following through on their promises.
America needs a regulated healthcare system to prevent dentists deciding, "Well, this Novacaine's coming out of my pocket so ... no pain relief for this patient." Building on Obamacare allows for healthcare to become standard, rather than a commercial venture.
Needs to be quoted in its entirety.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.ccccdc02c02bI wont mince words. The health-care bill that the House of Representatives passed this afternoon, in an incredibly narrow 217-to-213 vote, is not just wrong, or misguided, or problematic or foolish. It is an abomination. If there has been a piece of legislation in our lifetimes that boiled over with as much malice and indifference to human suffering, I cant recall what it might have been. And every member of the House who voted for it must be held accountable.
Theres certainly a process critique one can make about this bill. We might focus on the fact that Republicans are rushing to pass it without having held a single hearing on it, without a score from the Congressional Budget Office that would tell us exactly what the effects would be, and before nearly anyone has had a chance to even look at the bills actual text all this despite the fact that they are remaking one-sixth of the American economy and affecting all of our lives (and despite their long and ridiculous claims that the Affordable Care Act was rammed through Congress, when in fact it was debated for an entire year and was the subject of dozens of hearings and endless public discussion). We might talk about how every major stakeholder group the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the AARP, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Association, and on and on all oppose the bill.
All that matters. But the real problem is whats in the bill itself. Here are some of the things it does:
- Takes health insurance away from at least 24 million Americans; that was the number the CBO estimated for a previous version of the bill, and the number for this one is probably higher.
- Revokes the Affordable Care Acts expansion of Medicaid, which provided no-cost health coverage to millions of low-income Americans.
- Turns Medicaid into a block grant, enabling states to kick otherwise-eligible people off their coverage and cut benefits if they so choose.
- Slashes Medicaid overall by $880 billion over 10 years.
- Removes the subsidies that the ACA provided to help middle-income people afford health insurance, replacing them with far more meager tax credits pegged not to peoples income but to their age. Poorer people would get less than they do now, while richer people would get more; even Bill Gates would get a tax credit.
- Allows insurers to charge dramatically higher premiums to older patients.
- Allows insurers to impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage, which were outlawed by the ACA. This also, it was revealed today, may threaten the coverage of the majority of non-elderly Americans who get insurance through their employers.
- Allows states to seek waivers from the ACAs requirement that insurance plans include essential benefits for things such as emergency services, hospitalization, mental health care, preventive care, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment.
- Provides hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for families making over $250,000 a year.
- Produces higher deductibles for patients.
- Allows states to try to waive the ACAs requirement that insurers must charge people the same rates regardless of their medical history. This effectively eviscerates the ban on denials for preexisting conditions, since insurers could charge you exorbitant premiums if you have a preexisting condition, effectively denying you coverage.
- Shunts those with preexisting conditions into high-risk pools, which are absolutely the worst way to cover those patients; experience with them on the state level proves that they wind up underfunded, charge enormous premiums, provide inadequate benefits and cant cover the population theyre meant for. Multiple analyses have shown that the money the bill provides for high-risk pools is laughably inadequate, which will inevitably leave huge numbers of the most vulnerable Americans without the ability to get insurance.
- Brings back medical underwriting, meaning that just like in the bad old days, when you apply for insurance youll have to document every condition or ailment youve ever had.
It is no exaggeration to say that if it were to become law, this bill would kill significant numbers of Americans. People who lose their Medicaid, dont go to the doctor, and wind up finding out too late that theyre sick. People whose serious conditions put them up against lifetime limits or render them unable to afford whats on offer in the high-risk pools, and are suddenly unable to get treatment.
Those deaths are not abstractions, and those who vote to bring them about must be held to account. This can and should be a career-defining vote for every member of the House. No one who votes for something this vicious should be allowed to forget it ever. They should be challenged about it at every town hall meeting, at every campaign debate, in every election and every day as the letters and phone calls from angry and betrayed constituents make clear the intensity of their revulsion at what their representatives have done.
Perhaps this bill will never become law, and its harm may be averted. But that would not mitigate the moral responsibility of those who supported it. Members of Congress vote on a lot of inconsequential bills and bills that have a small impact on limited areas of American life. But this is one of the most critical moments in recent American political history. The Republican health-care bill is an act of monstrous cruelty. It should stain those who supported it to the end of their days.
This stuff is just the conclusion of America's own internal logic. They need to change the logic quite urgently.
What logic do you think that is?Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Manifest destiny, Go West Young Man, the American Dream etc etc. It's all about grasping and every man for himself, never about community or less still a social safety net.
Jimmy has it right on this one. It manifests itself in every single area and fucks everything up.
You would think an actual 'grasping and every man for himself' system would be better, since people would at least be failing (and getting dead) on their own terms, or covering their own families. This just sounds like a corporatist, worst of all worlds nightmare.
At least Republicans are keeping up with their promises, amirite?
What are he main benefits of the AHCA according to the GOP? I've looked online and the main things appear to be;
- Cheaper for the "average person" (middle class??)
- "Better"
- Not Obamacare...
I'm seriously struggling to find a sensible list of benefits...
I think they've given up on trying to pretend they care for the people.
There's too much corporate interest in every facet of American infrastructure.
Crime? Can't touch guns. Too much money riding on it.
Healthcare? We're not giving pills away for free.
Schools? Trump University's got your back.
Welfare? Erm .... have some stamps.
Don't forget private prisons. There is actually an incentive to have more people in prison, got to keep the cash flowing.
Plus the prisoners make the kevlar vests for our fighting men and women overs.... in the police.
It's an odd situation when I agree completely with a broad statement from Jim on politics, but there you go. We live in strange times.
I'm not as right wing as you think. I just hate the British left, and the shallow gesture politics they've adopted in the last 30 years.
It's only got shallower as twitter's taken hold, too. Equality is about the state not caring about whatever you think you are. None of this celebratory wank.
- Lowers the cost of insurance / healthcare for everybody (goods and services have costs, sorry some extra poor people don't get 'free' healthcare paid for by other people anymore)
- Lowers the amount of burden shouldered by the government (reduces the deficit) within the healthcare field
- Gives state's more power to dictate their own policies and implement innovative approaches (more federalism)
Seems like a win to me? This is what conservative reform looks like (although it could be better, it's a step in the right direction).
You realise money for universal healthcare has to come from somewhere, right?
Ah, the Donald Trump school of declaring that the bill does something, when there's no reason to believe that it does other than "free market!" If this worked, then costs wouldn't be (and wouldn't have been before Obamacare as well) twice what they are in comparable economies.
Unless you actually need insurance / healthcare.
Why is this oh so important? And if it is, why is it not applied to other areas (military being the most obvious one)?
I always lol at the 'small governmentz!' talk of the Republicans. Then, when cities want to implement their own laws, Republicans chimp out and create state laws to forbid cities from 'federalism.' Apparently 'small government' stops at the state level.
Republicans only want states to have the priority over the feds because it's easier for big business to push states around. I mean, are Mississippi or Idaho likely to be able to put giant insurance companies in their place?
Ontario?
I knew I'd mixed that up. Idaho.
Alright, I'm aboard the Mert is a Sociopath train. Siding with the government's burden rather than an essential service for all Americans clinched it.
Proper right-wing conservatives resent the idea of society in any meaningful sense. The idea that part of the price of living in a civilized society is helping others within that society who need it is an anathema. This is the real issue they have with the healthcare laws - people losing their healthcare access is a feature, not a bug. If they deserved it, they could afford it.
What's mine is mine.
Neither Mert nor Trump are 'proper right-wing conservatives.'
Mert's pretty down-the-line I think, for all that he blusters. Trump's just a populist who is being used, which is why he initially balked when he realised that the healthcare plan would uninsure so many people.
But Ryan holds the reins, and he's a right-winger's right-winger. No spectre more horrifying than the idea that someone, somewhere might get something they don't deserve.
He refers to the women he shags as numbers. Even his ex, he shows off in mugshots like a possession. Poor, nameless lass.
They seem to have adopted a new meme - access to healthcare. They're saying they'll improve this, and that nobody dies because of lack of access.
It's monumentally dishonest, since "access" might cost ten times what most people earn.
Comey's been fired: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...d-donald-trump
Mess.
Edit:
He is firing him for getting him elected lol.
It's clearly about the Russia investigation. The fact that the best they could do to try and murk that up is the Clinton email stuff is even more amusingly pathetic.
What an embarassing tinpot attempt at dictatorship.
Richard Nixon was better at this.
It is.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...-russia-238192
The state of this article...
Wonder what Mert thinks.
Justice.
You have to wonder just how bad the Russia links are if the maths told them this would play better than letting the investigation run to completion
(Supposedly) they didn't think this would blow up like it did. You still have talking heads on Fox wondering why it's a big deal.
It's pretty outrageous. Very interested in seeing Mert's opinion (for once).
We already know Mert's response.
Brave.... Right thing to do.... Comey couldn't be trusted...
So he sacked him for something he knew about when he took office and said he had full confidence in him, yeah right.
I wonder if Trump only just worked out he was allowed to just sack him and thought that would be a grand idea.
Surely they're aware how bad this looks. How much worse was the alternative?
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