A Futile and Stupid Gesture: The History of the First Trump Presidency & Q-Anon

Well, apparently when you're leading government you're not a dictator and you actually have to work to get consensus and pass legislation. Who would have thought that?

There's no executive order that can fix this?!?
 
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Wow, you would think World War 2 was just won.

Lots of cute twittering, not so much on the substancing side.

Does anyone have any of their own original thoughts?
 
OfficePants said:
Wow, you would think World War 2 was just won.

Lots of cute twittering, not so much on the substancing side.

Does anyone have any of their own original thoughts?
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Dude's a total legislative failure so far, will be the first president since before at least Clinton not to ram one of his central pieces of legislation to a vote in first 100 days.

Plus, you're earlier post shows you aren't grasping that in the legislative process you can't walk away from a deal, and everyone in government knows that. If you walk, nothing happens, and there's no point in having government. It's wholly different than financial deals.

Also, you went for the tried and true attack the messenger instead of message on Schiff for no apparent reason, as he wasn't the focus, but rather every sentient being knows Nunes is quite alarmed at what he is hearing, his "source" is probably the White house itself, and he is doing everything he can to manage the political fallout which is actually hurting him because he is totally fucking inept. Also, he is probably worried about having been snared in this himself. And to top it all off, while I personally don't care for Schiff, he is well respected, Ben Witte from Lawfare just did a write up on the very subject.

Now that you are up to speed, I'm going back to twitter, cause that shit is funny. And my schadenfreude cup runneth over at the moment. I know somewhere in America John Boehner is cackling wildly while drinking merlot and smoking Camel Lights.



 
My original thought is the President is the first amongst equals. To most cultures that is a baffling concept that cannot be realised.

If the United States of America was a sole proprietorship, I'd say the President would be doing well by his standards. This happens to be the first barrier where he realises government in a democracy is a representative democracy and you have to work with the people who were elected - and in some strange obtuse way, they didn't all elect him.
 
doghouse said:
Dude's a total legislative failure so far, will be the first president since before at least Clinton not to ram one of his central pieces of legislation to a vote in first 100 days.

Plus, you're earlier post shows you aren't grasping that in the legislative process you can't walk away from a deal, and everyone in government knows that. If you walk, nothing happens, and there's no point in having government. It's wholly different than financial deals.
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I grasp it fine. Don't get the deal you want, wait for a better deal. He knows the Obamacare implosion is imminent, so he has the key negotiating chip on his side.

"Nothing happens" is ok. Pulling the vote is being used as some broad confirmation of failure, when it's not. It was a bad deal and I am glad Trump didn't make it.

Obama made a shit deal with Obamacare, now its coming to roost.

doghouse said:
Also, you went for the tried and true attack the messenger instead of message on Schiff for no apparent reason, as he wasn't the focus, but rather every sentient being knows Nunes is quite alarmed at what he is hearing, his "source" is probably the White house itself, and he is doing everything he can to manage the political fallout which is actually hurting him because he is totally fucking inept.
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Schiff is a clown, and I was surprised you'd quote him. He actually went up in the last hearing with Comey and started quoting from that Steele dossier. No interest in the situation, only smearing and deligitimizing the president.

All that Nunes talk is baseless speculation.

doghouse said:
Also, he is probably worried about having been snared in this himself. And to top it all off, while I personally don't care for Schiff, he is well respected, Ben Witte from Lawfare just did a write up on the very subject.
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Baseless speculation, part 2.

What we should all be worried about is being spied on, which is happening to all of us. And is, like, illegal.
 
Today in unoriginal.

Pay attention to the subtle bias, this is leftist reporting done with sublime coercion. Ted Koppel is an elder statesman, and he's learned that his stature can fool people into believing his fallacy: his railing on facts is a false narrative.

Funny how suddenly facts matter.

With Obama you had 8 years of every agency invited to get in on the gangbang of the public taking the sloppy seconds with humble gratitude. Spy away on us, illegal or not. And in his last days in office he decided to let everyone share the videos between agencies. Nice work, "President".

You know what I've learned about red-pilling? It's post factual because we've gotten smart enough to manipulate a narrow fact and turn it into some defining truth, just look at the questions that were asked of the population when formulating polls about the election: fooling everyone into the Hillary Inevitable mentality.

Thank the universe that hag lost, and give Trump time. In a post fact world he didn't create, you gotta trust your gut. And my guy says Trump is trying to stop this mess.

Or ya, 7 months in keep believing the Russia distraction.

 
Both Trumpcare and Obamacare lack one vital aspect: bipartisanship. Without broad support from both parties you'll just get a repeal and replace every 4-8 years. This sort of ineffective governing is causing a rise in populism. SAD!
 
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Monkeyface said:
Both Trumpcare and Obamacare lack one vital aspect: bipartisanship. Without broad support from both parties you'll just get a repeal and replace every 4-8 years. This sort of ineffective governing is causing a rise in populism. SAD!
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Mind-boggling, isn't it? It is utterly pathetic that something as vital as this is being dicked around with.
 
Monkeyface said:
Both Trumpcare and Obamacare lack one vital aspect: bipartisanship. Without broad support from both parties you'll just get a repeal and replace every 4-8 years. This sort of ineffective governing is causing a rise in populism. SAD!
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Get employers out of the business of providing healthcare and eliminate all federal intervention.

I change jobs and so I have to change providers, plans, all new rules? It's really stupid.

There is no bipartisan solution here. One side wants nationalized healthcare, the other wants no government intervention.
Since it can't be solved at a federal level, let it be a state issue.

The rise of the federal government has robbed the ability of states to be incubators for good ideas. Let each state solve it for the people that live within so it's tailored to the wishes of that state's population. Then let states see what is working in other places and adopt good ideas.
 
OfficePants said:
Get employers out of the business of providing healthcare and eliminate all federal intervention.

I change jobs and so I have to change providers, plans, all new rules? It's really stupid.

There is no bipartisan solution here. One side wants nationalized healthcare, the other wants no government intervention.
Since it can't be solved at a federal level, let it be a state issue.

The rise of the federal government has robbed the ability of states to be incubators for good ideas. Let each state solve it for the people that live within so it's tailored to the wishes of that state's population. Then let states see what is working in other places and adopt good ideas.
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I agree about employment thing, I disagree about letting all the states sort it out. Why would you need to repeat the same process 50 times? Why reinvent the wheel? It's incredibly inenfficient and costly to let each state pay for its own way. Economies of scale work wonders for healthcare negotiations.

Healthcare is not a novel issue. Just study what other countries have done, pick the best model, and use that. There's 50 years of empirical data available, plenty to study.

If someone asked you to design a car, would you start from scratch? Or maybe look a BMW, Toyota and Ford first, to see how others have solved the problem of transportation?
 
You don't really have 50 years of empirical data. You have a bunch of countries with nationalized healthcare, something that a large portion of this country is steadfast against. You don't have that resistance in those nations you have here.

I don't know of another country that has the US style system.

If you can't sort it out at a federal level, which it doesn't seem possible to do, then sort it out at a state level.

While you have 50 separate healthcare systems, you're ignoring the number of opportunities to learn and improve that come with that. Instead you want to guess right with some monolithic federal system that can't change once you put it in. And if it sucks, which obamacare kinda does, you have to live with it.

States are more agile, and we need to start using them to bypass this federal monster we've created.
 
Germany is far and away the health care system I would pick. It's private, but regulated. We regulate our power and other utilities here, but not our health care? It's retarded.

I'm generally a states rights person, but we are shooting ourselves in the face by not competing across state lines with healthcare costs. It would drive costs down massively by breaking up what is far and away the biggest oligarchy in the U.S. today.
 
You can give competition across state lines and give states control of healthcare. They're not mutually exclusive.

Problem with a German style system is doctors would revolt. Doctors in Germany make WAY less than here. An average doctor in GER makes like 80k where in the US the average is like 180k.
 
OfficePants said:
You can give competition across state lines and give states control of healthcare. They're not mutually exclusive.

Problem with a German style system is doctors would revolt. Doctors in Germany make WAY less than here. An average doctor in GER makes like 80k where in the US the average is like 180k.
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That doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem.
 
OfficePants said:
You don't really have 50 years of empirical data. You have a bunch of countries with nationalized healthcare, something that a large portion of this country is steadfast against. You don't have that resistance in those nations you have here.

I don't know of another country that has the US style system.

If you can't sort it out at a federal level, which it doesn't seem possible to do, then sort it out at a state level.

While you have 50 separate healthcare systems, you're ignoring the number of opportunities to learn and improve that come with that. Instead you want to guess right with some monolithic federal system that can't change once you put it in. And if it sucks, which obamacare kinda does, you have to live with it.

States are more agile, and we need to start using them to bypass this federal monster we've created.
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It seems like the elected representives are against it, but the public is not. There was a great article on politico about this. The freedom Caucus thought they were elected because the people believed in their libertarian ideals. Turns out their voters didn't care about that at all, they just chose the most extreme right available regardless of their ideology.
 
Monkeyface said:
That doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem.
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Not a problem to reduce an entire profession's salary by half? The reason healthcare is viable in GER is because the cost is a fraction of here. You not only would have to lower salaries across the board, but you'd have to lower the cost of absolutely everything. Seems kinda insurmountable.

Monkeyface said:
It seems like the elected representives are against it, but the public is not. There was a great article on politico about this. The freedom Caucus thought they were elected because the people believed in their libertarian ideals. Turns out their voters didn't care about that at all, they just chose the most extreme right available regardless of their ideology.
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They were elected because they were hardline fiscal conservatives. "Voters" in some royal sense may not agree as a whole, but the ones in their districts very much do.
 
OfficePants said:
Not a problem to reduce an entire profession's salary by half? The reason healthcare is viable in GER is because the cost is a fraction of here. You not only would have to lower salaries across the board, but you'd have to lower the cost of absolutely everything. Seems kinda insurmountable.



They were elected because they were hardline fiscal conservatives. "Voters" in some royal sense may not agree as a whole, but the ones in their districts very much do.
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I'd bet you $100 that if there were a nationwide referendum about single payer healthcare (no gerrymandering) that it would win by a wide margin.
The fact that Trump won shows that voters don't care about being fiscally responsible/conservative at all. Building a super expensive wall, 1tn fiscal stimulus package, more defense spending, etc.
 
OfficePants said:
Perhaps that could all be true, but it doesn't address my comment.
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Well, how about using the Dutch system? The average Dutch doctor makes about the same (GPS) /more than the average US doctor. Problem solved.

Don't forget the high pharma costs in the Us because there isn't a single negotiator. State negotiations could lower drug costs significantly as well.
 
OfficePants said:
Netherlands:

Average yearly salary (GP's): $117,000

This is 2009 data, but that gap is huge no matter what country.

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/?_r=0
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It's not huge, certainly not half. And more detailed data shows GPs make less but specialists more. Besides, where would US doctors go to get paid more? They'd need to get new licenses as well, so pretty inelastic I'd say.

So, doctors take a 30% pay cut, but getting sick does not mean bankruptcy anymore for the average person. Nice trade off. Colleges would be forced to lower tuition fees as well. Everyone wins in the long run (except pharma sharedholders and overpaid college administrators).
 
OfficePants said:
Ok, I'll bite. How so?
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Are you responding to me?

If states can regulate independently, you can't leverage common service and cost across the whole network. You would have to have federal minimums and then let states add to that if they wished.
 
Monkeyface said:
It's not huge, certainly not half. And more detailed data shows GPs make less but specialists more. Besides, where would US doctors go to get paid more? They'd need to get new licenses as well, so pretty inelastic I'd say.

So, doctors take a 30% pay cut, but getting sick does not mean bankruptcy anymore for the average person. Nice trade off. Colleges would be forced to lower tuition fees as well. Everyone wins in the long run (except pharma sharedholders and overpaid college administrators).
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All neat and clean until nobody wants to be a doctor anymore because the salaries suck. Or they all become "private" doctors and so the doctors left over are The Simpson's style doctors.
 
US Docs - like in every American sector really - work like dogs. One of the side-effects of UK exiting the EU will be the European Working time directive which could see UK docs working insanely long hours as their US counterparts.

All those hours and not much time to enjoy the fruits of their labour so in essence it wont be a paycut if working time is substantively truncated.
 
OfficePants said:
All neat and clean until nobody wants to be a doctor anymore because the salaries suck. Or they all become "private" doctors and so the doctors left over are The Simpson's style doctors.
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No, because colleges will be forced to lower the tuitions. Lower tuition=less debt=lower salary is ok. If Americans don't want to do the job I'm sure plenty of forruners would be eager to take their spot.

:problemo:
 
doghouse said:
Are you responding to me?

If states can regulate independently, you can't leverage common service and cost across the whole network. You would have to have federal minimums and then let states add to that if they wished.
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I am.

Why can't insurance companies be the ones to provide common services across states?

You don't need federal anything... if a state wants to divest itself from providing anything, it can. Verizon does it with cell phone plans.

I'm still not understanding how you believe the competition across state lines and giving states control of healthcare are mutually exclusive, as you suggested.
 
Monkeyface said:
No, because colleges will be forced to lower the tuitions. Lower tuition=less debt=lower salary is ok. If Americans don't want to do the job I'm sure plenty of forruners would be eager to take their spot.

:problemo:
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Now colleges have to get involved? And pass on India trained doctors. Not exactly a culture based on honesty and ethics.

In essence, we turn medicine into house keepers and make it a job American's no longer want to do?

This is all starting to sound a bit farcical.
 
OfficePants said:
Now colleges have to get involved? And pass on India trained doctors. Not exactly a culture based on honesty and ethics.

In essence, we turn medicine into house keepers and make it a job American's no longer want to do?

This is all starting to sound a bit farcical.
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Olo, you are an expert in hyperboles.
 
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