The Politics Thread

[DRW50]

Rand Paul desperately posturing himself as Important (as the media, who have tried and failed to hype him up for a decade, pants along) when we all know he always caves in is as stomach-churning as ever.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/23/kavanaugh-rand-paul-supreme-court-confirmation-senate-734228

 

Speaking of desperate, the media attempts to make this new Sacha Baren Cohen show into some grand statement on America when it's really just a Y2K-era relic mostly doing the same old tricks and telling us nothing we don't already know seem downright incoherent. The only good thing I can say about it is that at least it is a reminder of how many genuinely terrible, soulless people are in the GOP and, miraculously, were there decades before Trump!

 

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a22486973/sacha-baron-cohen-this-is-america-episode-2-review/

 

Paul Ryan is still pushing these cuts to essential government services even as he heads to exit doors, and he still naively believes they will help us all. I don't know what is worse - this, or bimbo Kevin McCarthy, who will just be doing them for cold hard corporate greed, not because he thinks Ayn Rand will bless us all. 

[JaneAusten]

So the "great" taxcuts have now driven wages down. But hey corporate America and the 1% are getting even richer. But rah rah the worthless taxcut.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-18/trump-s-tax-cut-hasn-t-done-anything-for-workers?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business

 

And this is the reality for so many people in this country and not just poor people but middle class folks. But it's so easy for folks to not give a darn.  

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by JaneAusten

[Ryan Chamberlain]

 

My mom flat out thinks he's the Antichrist. 

[DRW50]

I really wonder if anybody out there, beyond the true believers, actually thinks the tax cut helped anyone. I guess the GOP is still talking it up, but even some of them flat out said that Trump's trade war pissed all over it (admittedly they are just using that as an excuse when the cuts were likely going to fail anyway).

[marceline]

 

The tax cut is a perfect example of how wealthy Republicans get poor and middle class people to cut their own throats. I see people on Sherrod Brown's page just lying about all the money they're getting now because of the tax cuts. Republican voters love to think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It reminds me of how most of the people fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War were too poor to own slaves but they were still willing to die to preserve the institution of slavery.

[Juliajms]

Yes, it's just crazy to me when people defend the insane amount of benefits the wealthy receive.  Even people who are 401k millionaires should not be voting Republican if it's about economics. We have generations of people who could really stand to take sociology 101, instead of believing that all you have to do is work hard and you will get rich.

[Juliajms]

Here's some good news, if you trust it.

 

[JaneAusten]

 

I believe this 1000%. I think the only folks today who ID themselves as one party or another are true partisans. And with Independents Trump is in the water by over 25%.

 

My brother, my nephew, and one of my best friends who is from Indiana, all diehard republicans no longer ID themselves that way. They all claim to be independents. And all hate Trump by the way. And out of the 3, my nephew is the only Trump voter. He never really liked him but now hates him with a passion. I won't get into the logic as to why he voted for him. It's not worth discussing but says it was the worst mistake he made.

[juppiter]

 

The simple answer is I don’t know how you give affordable health care while the government also forces plans to cover pre-existing conditions. That, by definition, drives costs up. 

 

Yes, it is unfair that people get pre-existing conditions through no fault of their own. But the government cannot prevent that. 

[Wendy]

 

If they can cover these useless pieces of garbage in Congress, the government can pay for its citizens. Other countries do it and do it well.

[DramatistDreamer]

And I've experienced two power outages in the last six weeks!!

 

[JaneAusten]

What on earth do you think Medicare covers? The reason Medicare exists was due to higher insurance costs for seniors making it unaffordable. The answer is take health insurance out of the hands of the private insurance industry as we have done with Medicare. Like every other country on earth has done including places like China and Russia. And no Canada, the UK, France, Denmark, Germany do not have crap healthcare or doctors who are gvmt employees.

 

Frankly you folks are so limited in how you see things, you don't even realize how employers use private health insurance to keep you locked into working for them giving you less freedom to decide who you want to work for.  If we had a National Healthcare Program like Richard Nixon actually proposed when he was president, it would work similarly to Medicare and guess what. Employers could get out of the business of providing healthcare for their employees, giving them more latitude to compete with companies globally who do not have to worry about it or the costs associated with it. Most importantly it would give citizens healthcare so you could work for whoever you want to without worrying about whether your healthcare plan would provide the type of coverage you need and want.

 

And no Medicare is not going broke. We actually have a separate TAX CALLED PAYROLL TAX that was implemented to cover social security, medicare, and Medicaid., before you start telling me we cannot afford it and blah blah about more taxes. Maybe ask your senators and congress people why they keep lying to Americans about how these programs are going broke when they have a huge surplus.  You know who's going broke? The gvmt where our federal INCOME TAX NOT PAYROLL TAX pay for things like defense spending and congressional healthcare and salaries. So if you want to save tax dollars start there with the secret sexual harassment settlement fund for congress, the lifetime healthcare they get for themselves and their families, and their salaries for doing nothing. Then start going after our bloated 1 trillion dollar military budget and private prison program where the costs we spend today are inflated by 500% over what we paid when we didn't pay private defense contractors and private prisons for gvmt responsibilities. That's how GREAT privatization is. Take a look and see how much we are paying to jail each toddler we put in an internment camp and how much money the prison industry is making off this then come back and cry about social security and medicare taxation.

Edited July 24, 2018 by JaneAusten

[DramatistDreamer]

Remember when President Obama wanted to upgrade the electrical grid nationwide but the Republicans threatened to torpedo any more spending higher than the most meager stimulus plan? Yeah, I remember that.

Makes me wonder whether some Republicans were being cultivated by Russian operatives even back then. Perhaps the operatives had a hand in preventing the necessary upgrades to the electrical grid with the hopes that it would be weak enough for them to manipulate and hack.  

Makes me wonder.

[GMac]

 

Bravo!

 

[Khan]

 

Makes me wonder, too.

 

The GOP were, and are, determined to destroy Obama's legacy and win at all costs.  Perhaps they really would sell out themselves, and us, to Russia; and perhaps they really did do that sooner than anyone wants to think.

 

Thank you, Jane.  At least you have the guts to set the record straight.  I wish I had that same courage to do the same with my own mother.

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Edited July 24, 2018 by Khan