The Politics Thread

[GregNYC]

Swedish Democrats: Trump Is Right, Sweden’s Embrace of Refugees Isn’t Working

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/23/sweden-democrats-trump-was-right.html

 

Per Jimmie Akesson and Mattias Karlsson, both leaders of the Sweden Democrats, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday supporting Trump’s characterization of a Muslim immigrant-led crime crisis in Sweden.

 

“Mr. Trump did not exaggerate Sweden’s current problems,” Akesson and Karlsson wrote. “If anything, he understated them.”

Some Swedish politicians openly derided Trump’s portrayal of the country – but riots in a heavily immigrant suburb of Stockholm on Monday evening put an end to most of the mockery.

 

“Riots and social unrest have become a part of everyday life,” Akesson and Karlsson wrote. “Police officers, firefighters and ambulance personnel are regularly attacked. Serious riots in 2013, involving many suburbs with large immigrant populations, lasted for almost a week. Gang violence is booming. Despite very strict firearms laws, gun violence is five times as common in Sweden, in total, as in the capital cities of our three Nordic neighbors combined.”

They added: “Anti-Semitism has risen. Jews in Malmo are threatened, harassed and assaulted in the streets. Many have left the city, becoming internal refugees in their country of birth.”

 

“For the sake of the American people,” Akesson and Karlsson wrote, “with whom we share so many strong historical and cultural ties, we can only hope that the leaders in Washington won’t make the same mistakes that our socialist and liberal politicians did.”

[DramatistDreamer]

Straight outta Putin's handbook.

 

Edited February 24, 2017 by DramatistDreamer

[Wales2004]

This one they call the gaggle.  I don't know if that means he is sitting down when he tells his lies so they weren't missing anything.  What he did was create something for the media to toss around and around for the weekend and beyond, as this gets added to the list of  outrages the media has endured courtesy of Trumpville.

 

And I am back on this momentarily (not because of the hypocrisy), but because Spicer tied marijuana use to the opioid addiction as if getting rid of marijuana is a fix.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/24/politics/states-rights-marijuana-bathrooms/index.html

Somebody please explain to me how I missed news about the decades of opioid addiction that has plagued the world since man has been smoking ganja.

[dragonflies]

Uhm smack me please, this almost doesn't sound bad reading the article.

 

 

[ReddFoxx]

If subsidies are cut, that really will hurt a lot people and increase insured rates again. This replacement is garbage.

[JaneAusten]

The GOP solution to this is always tax credits which means nada to people making 35k a year or less.  That was McCain's so called plan when he ran in 2008 also. Point is that the plan is supposed to be better. So where is the better? And people like me with PEC oh goody we get put back in the high risk pool.

[marceline]

 

I hate this. The gateway to opioid addiction is...opiates. People get prescribed painkillers and get hooked. 

[Khan]

Why do people always assume marijuana use leads to "harder drugs" anyway?  Where do they get their info?

 

Yeah, Boehner was the one who said the ACA wasn't going anywhere.  Of course, that shouldn't surprise anyone with a brain.  JaneAusten and others here have been saying THAT all along.

Edited February 25, 2017 by Khan

[JaneAusten]

Well I am worried about people like Dragonflies above(not picking on you my friend) who will think anything is ok. We should be demanding something better not even something equal or less. Why is something less worthy not bad? The democrats need to get off their lazy butts and counter this ridiculousness. Fix the ACA and quit making it more complicated with a repeal and replace that's going to replace the ACA with something less.

 

And by the way the GOP plan also shows they intend to block people from care at Planned Parenthood. See how much they care about women's health.

Edited February 25, 2017 by JaneAusten

[Wales2004]

Exactly.  The GOP does not want to pay for rehab and they don't want to go after the doctors who are over-prescribing.  I seriously think they want those people to just die in some sort of survival of the fittest special reasoning universe where Paul Ryan, Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, etc dwell mentally.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/finally-a-house-draft-of-trumpcare-emerges-and-it-would-defund-planned-parenthood-214212240.html

I think that's an accessible breakdown.  Now, I totally get people being against the tax penalty and I even get people saying they should not be forced to pay for something they do not want.  The thing is, some of us would not buy auto insurance if it wasn't required and even though, some of us may never have an accident it's that gamble.  Just in case.  I hear people say they don't need health insurance because they are healthy which is again fine except if something unexpected happens.  So it's a gamble.  Part of living in a generally orderly society is sacrifices and that's the part with which some people don't want to come to grips.  The GOP is really good at brainwashing people about the evils of government without explaining what they're actually doing in governmental positions, other than sucking up taxpayer's dollars themselves. 

 

My parting gift is what is sure to be called nothing but Fake News:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-dhs-report-travel-ban-nations-20170224-story.html

 

I kind of think Trump forgot about the grave danger we were all in a couple of weeks ago when he had to rush that EO to save America from all those refugee terrorists.  They're having a jolly old time at CPAC and he is off to inconvenience some more Floridians again this weekend, instead of keeping us all safe.....so much for that.  But I'm sure next week when he gets his new order or whenever it is, we'll be told to work ourselves up into a tizzy again with mass hysteria about the great evils of people trying to escape horrible conditions.

[Vee]

Bigger and bigger.

[JaneAusten]

They also get the best and lifetime health insurance. What do they care.

 

I use my nephew as the example of someone who chose not to have health insurance(before the ACA). He had an accident on an ATV that messed up his jaw badly. He had to have 2 reconstructive surgeries and all new teeth implanted.  He was at least smart enough to get the dental work done through the local dental school which cut down a 20k procedure to 3k but he had to get that money from his grandmother(my mom) because he didn't have it to pay upfront. The rest of his treatment which amounted to around 80K went poof when he filed bankruptcy. So who pays for that? We all do with higher premiums. Its why none of this will solve the healthcare problems and costs. Those of us who want it and need it and realize it's needed end up paying for those fools who don't get it because they are "healthy". If they are young and healthy, their premiums are also dirt cheap IMO. At least compared with what some of the rest of us have to pay.

Edited February 25, 2017 by JaneAusten

[Wendy]

 

And...nothing will come of it. This administration - inexplicably - seems to be made of Teflon. It keeps doing reprehensible things, trying to pass discriminatory legislature, and surrogates blah-blah about Trump family businesses and to buy their merchandise, pointing to conflict of interest galore. And <crickets>

 

As long as the GOP has all the power, Trump will skate like Nancy Kerrigan, and it sickens me. As does the limiting of the press - which will also come to nothing.

 

Sorry to sound so cynical and defeated, but this isn't the early 1970s anymore. It's "party before country" now...

[Vee]

 

You and I have gotten very different impressions from the last five weeks. People have been pushing back hard and this administration keeps crumbling under the pressure, starting with the travel ban disaster.

 

You're right, it's not the '70s. It's also not 2004.

[JaneAusten]

I think you have to give it time. If you read anything about Watergate that went on for over 2 years before it caught up with Nixon and the GOP. The GOP even then thought they could manage the situation. And Nixon still lasted over 6 months after the Saturday night massacre when Cox was fired. And Watergate also started with a DNC break in.