US national policy issues looming after healthcare?

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rottingjohnny

Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
May 24, 2017 - 05:51pm PT
LMAO....
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
May 24, 2017 - 09:36pm PT
At some point, something far more damning (than what we have seen so far) might come out


Oh my. Like having sex with an intern in the oval office?
Mighty Hiker

climber
Outside the Asylum
May 24, 2017 - 09:47pm PT
Does treason (and malignant incompetence) really equate with a sordid blowjob?
johnboy

Trad climber
Can't get here from there
May 24, 2017 - 10:22pm PT
After all, he wrote specifically in his "Art of the Deal"

I don't believe Trump wrote a word of the book, or ever read one.

I think what you meant was some form of this statement got put into the book by the real writer Tony Shwarts.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
May 24, 2017 - 11:19pm PT
Thug life:

http://missoulian.com/opinion/editorial/missoulian-rescinds-gianforte-endorsement/article_ab947a9d-9220-5dc5-9193-f1ae9ef03c60.html

Greg Gianforte should not represent Montana in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Republican candidate for Congress not only lost the endorsement of this newspaper Wednesday night when, according to witnesses, he put his hands around the throat of a reporter asking him about his health care stance, threw him to the ground and punched him — he should lose the confidence of all Montanans.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/24/greg-gianforte-fox-news-team-witnesses-gop-house-candidate-body-slam-reporter.html

[Click to View YouTube Video]
nah000

climber
no/w/here
May 24, 2017 - 11:40pm PT
MH wrote: Does treason really equate with a sordid blowjob?

does stealing $10k equate with stealing $10m?

yes and no of course.



treason and getting sexual pleasure from interns are both [typically] abuses of power for personal gain.

so categorically, they are in some ways equivalent.

quantitatively equivalent, otoh? depends on what the treason entailed is.

so far said treason is all just a bunch of hypotheticals primarily originating from a bunch of pissed off left wingers who can't accept that they lost due to being both out of touch in message and with putting forth a candidate who was just out of touch period.



ie. it depends on what "is" is... :)

and that remains to be seen.
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
May 25, 2017 - 07:53am PT
primarily originating from a bunch of pissed off left wingers

Laughably stupid, I guess Fox news has told you all you need to know

The FBI is the source of this, not pissed off liberals
The CIA, the NSA, several other Countries are all Red Flagging the Russia Connection

What are you going to say after the collusion is found?
That it's not as bad as the pissed liberals say it is?

If Trump knew about it, and said "let it continue" then it's collusion, a felony, and an Impeachable Offence

But we don't even need collusion, Trump has already committed a felony, "Obstruction of Justice" by firing Comey

Was firing Comey due to pissed off Liberals?
Sorry, Critical thinking has been supplanted with fake News

lost due to being both out of touch in message and with putting forth a candidate who was just out of touch period.
yes the right wing with the help of the Russian's smeared Hillary with the lies you believe, glad you can be a pawn for them.
Trump was so much more in touch, we all want the Wall and more tax cuts for the rich, we all love the "Leader"
I'm getting tired from all the winning
Cragar

climber
MSLA - MT
May 25, 2017 - 08:57am PT
Hey Kunlun...yeah, the pressure of a reporters question really got to him. It has been all over the news and we have a mail in ballot gig for this special election so he will likely win. The talk about his private business life appears to line up with his recent actions; not always violent but a loose cannon for sure. He is charged and will have to appear in court by June 7th. I'm fairly confident his actions will charge his base of 'tough' folks 'round here, you know, the fellers that love the term snowflake and have HippieHater stickers all over their CoalRollers!

I just heard on the news...

He really represents and upholds Montana values and will defeat ISIS
you.

Trad climber
fresh, isle
May 25, 2017 - 08:59am PT
jgill you're fvcking lucky that the guardrail
wasn't below the thimble because
your cowardly ass would never have
undertaken the ascent.
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
May 25, 2017 - 09:41am PT
Why—and How—Is Trump's Base Still Loyal to a Guy Who Is a Proven Disaster?

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-and-how-trumps-base-still-loyal-guy-who-proven-disaster

After all the lies, contradictions, hypocrisy, flip-flops, gaffes, unforced errors, self-pity, insults, provocations, threats, bullying, betrayals, disappointments, scapegoating, exploitation, nepotism, and corruption, why is Donald Trump still beloved by 35 percent of the country?

The most popular theory in the mainstream media is that Trumpists think Trump will bring jobs back. The hypothesis here is that their support for Trump derives entirely from economic anxiety over globalization, loss of manufacturing, the supposed failures of Obamacare, wage stagnation, income inequality, trade deficits, and soaring national debt. But economic angst does not really explain Trumpists’ unwavering devotion to Trump, whose cabinet appointments, executive orders and legislative proposals generally do not help or even pretend to help them.

Nor is the economic angst theory borne out by the evidence. As policy analyst Sean McElwee and Prof. Jason McDaniel recently wrote in The Nation, an analysis of “the comprehensive American National Election Studies pre- and post-election survey of over 4,000 respondents ... [yielded] little evidence to suggest individual economic distress benefited Trump” in the 2016 election. And even though all the economic data indicate both that the unemployment rate is consistently below 5 percent and that immigrants help to improve the economy, Trumpists are determined to believe just the opposite.

Their resistance to the economic facts, then, must be motivated by some deeper, non-economic concern.

The left insists that this deeper concern is cultural: Trumpists love Trump because they share his racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and misogyny. There is much to be said for this hypothesis. Neither Trump nor Trumpists seem to take equality very seriously, even though it is a cardinal principle of the Declaration of Independence and 14th Amendment. Even in 2017, they harbor toxic, hierarchical views of race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion and a pathological need to feel superior to other groups of people. Their worst nightmare was the country almost replacing the first black president with the first female president.

In her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New Press, 2016), Arlie Russell Hochschild paints a slightly more sympathetic picture of conservative Louisianans, and by extension, Trumpists generally. By Hochschild’s account, Trumpists feels as though the country “broke up” with them during the Obama era. They felt, and still feel, alienated by the left’s identity politics (“political correctness”), disparaged by the left’s opposition to traditional values (anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, anti-feminism, and religious faith), and weirdly threatened by the left’s view of government as an institution designed to solve problems that capitalism either creates or fails to solve.

All of this, plus the anger and hurt of feeling dumped, explains why Trumpists love Trump: he shares their bitterness and resentment. As long as he keeps giving all those self-righteous, contemptuous “elitists” the finger, a gesture that started with his birtherism, it doesn’t matter what else he says or does, how many lies he tells, how many mistakes he makes, or how many detrimental policies he advocates or enacts. All that matters is that he keep disrupting and subverting the arrogant, oppressive establishment—or “deconstruct[ing] the administrative state,” as Trump’s white nationalist advisor Steve Bannon put it.

Trumpists’ politics are ultimately rooted in raw emotion, not principles or thoughtful ideology. Much credit goes to such macho, anti-intellectual, grievance-stoking propagandists as Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and—until his recent termination by Fox News—Bill O’Reilly. Female commentators like Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin have also won their hearts (not minds) by routinely bashing the whiny, controlling, effeminate, snowflake liberals.

It is not clear whether Democrats can win over these narrow-minded, cultish voters in 2018. They are just not amenable to rational debate about the merits of Obama-era regulations or the dangers of autocratic populism. So Frank Rich is right: Democrats should leave them alone. They should stop feigning empathy or trying to shape their policies around Trumpists’ bigoted worldview. It is a complete waste of candidates’ valuable time and resources.

One thing is certain: given recent events, Republicans don’t get to yell and scream about national security—or emails, private servers, or Benghazi—ever again. Nor do they get to yell and scream about pretty much anything else. Their ignorant, narcissistic, unprincipled, and unpatriotic standard-bearer has cost them whatever moral high ground they pretended to have for at least a generation.
nah000

climber
no/w/here
May 25, 2017 - 10:16am PT
oh Fry... so hostile so early in the morning...

and way to cut off the contextually important "so far said treason is all just a bunch of hypotheticals" from your quoting of me.

or are you going to enlighten my apparently fox listening ass [thats high-larious] as to how trump has been found guilty and i missed it?



anyway, your partisanship is boring so i'll just leave you with this and let you word vomit projections back in my direction in peace:

the rethuglicans just spent eight years bitching about obama, having hard ons for benghazi, for clinton emails and etc.

then when they actually got into power?

"oh you mean you thought we actually had a plan for healthcare?"



dems are on the same path.

keep feeding your trump/russia boner and focus exclusively on the fUcktards in power instead of progressing a new plan...

it's working great for the rethuglicans [and since understanding any kind of grey or subtle thought doesn't appear to be your strong suit: /s]
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
May 25, 2017 - 10:36am PT
Complete BS
read the News

I'm just laying out the facts, I know they have a liberal bias

Give me your take on the Trump HealthCare Plan
The Trump Tax Plan
The Trump War on Women Plan
The Trump war on LBGTQ
The Trump war on drugs
The Trump plans are the same as the GOP plans

are they really same as the Dem's plans?

Your insistence of non-partisanism and both side do it is getting rather boring, since it's the biggest BS story ever

and your lame ass ad hominine attack is noted
August West

Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
May 25, 2017 - 10:37am PT

and way to cut off the contextually important "so far said treason is all just a bunch of hypotheticals" from your quoting of me.

or are you going to enlighten my apparently fox listening ass [thats high-larious] as to how trump has been found guilty and i missed it?



You realize, I hope, that there is a little bit of ground between being "just a bunch of hypotheticals" and being found guilty in a court of law.

OJ was not found guilty of murder in a criminal court. His killing of Nicole is more than a hypothetical...

It's not a hypothetical that Trump fired Comey. It's not a hypothetical that Trump was publicly critical of the FBI's Russian investigation. It hasn't been proven in a court a law that Trump pressured Comey to quash the investigation of Flynn and/or the Russian investigation but it has been widely reported by what still goes as mainstream media in this country. That is more than a hypothetical.

And beyond the possible obstruction of justice, the firing of Comey really shows how unfit Trump is for the job of being president. He appeared to have no idea of the amount of blowback he would get for doing that. At the very least, if he had a basic competence as a politician and manager of his staff, the Whitehouse should have had their story straight when Comey was fired.
Happiegrrrl2

Trad climber
May 25, 2017 - 10:43am PT
Trump shoved the PM of Montenegro out of his way at the NATO meeting. Look at the tapes and watch his face as he makes the move and the way he behaves afterward.

He sure does look, hypothetically, of course, like Putin's little bastard trying to please daddy in that moment of time.
rincon

climber
Coarsegold
May 25, 2017 - 10:54am PT
Disgraceful.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Cragar

climber
MSLA - MT
May 25, 2017 - 10:57am PT
Disgraceful for sure but a lot of our foreign policy is essentially that and that is what more folks should be concerned about IMO. How many military bases doe we have on foreign soil?
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Topic Author's Reply - May 25, 2017 - 11:37am PT
It's hard to focus on anything except the ongoing Trump debacle... but:


Gerrymandering! This gets at the heart of some deep and fixable issues in our country:
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1-busting-the-both-sides-do-it-myth/

A systematic effort to redraw the borders between congressional districts can cause one party to have way more representation than the overall percentage of votes in their state would indicate. And if the party in control has the authority to redraw these lines, they do so in a way that increases the likelihood of their future victory. Here's a breakdown on the states where this is most abused, and by which party:

The takeaway message is that Gerrymandering is a systematic effort to make elections and our congressional representation NOT reflect the overall will of the people. By far, this deceit is practiced more by the Republican party:


We should have laws that use non-partisan automated techniques for drawing district boundaries. I have not researched the potential solutions, but the first thing that comes to mind is using GIS software to create equal population districts that minimize the sum of district perimeters (to avoid having little tentacles sticking out of districts). Maybe getting fancier would be to define a variety of demographic divisions that represent the diversity of people in the district, and for each demographic group, create the least-perimeter boundary with equal population allocation to each, then perform a merging/overlay type function on each of the separate demographic boundaries to create an averaged boundary. The intent would be to yield boundaries that maximize diversity and increase competition for seats, so congressional representatives feel more compelled to represent as many people in their district as possible.

Whatever algorithm is used, the ultimate goal should be to ensure that on a state-by-state level, the balance of congressional representatives accurately reflects the distribution of views in that state. In other words, the House of Representatives should accurately *represent* the views of the people.
guyman

Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
May 25, 2017 - 12:06pm PT
Whatever algorithm is used, the ultimate goal should be to ensure that on a state-by-state level, the balance of congressional representatives accurately reflects the distribution of views in that state. In other words, the House of Representatives should accurately *represent* the views of the people.

Q: Nut how do you measure the "views" of the people?

A: hold an election.

Q: how can you make districts?

A: hand the job over to some good geographers, and keep all politicians out of the process.

What we get in California????? A great big flipping mess.



monolith

climber
state of being
May 25, 2017 - 12:12pm PT
LoL, hold an election. Sort of like electing a president where the views of most of the voters are ignored.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Topic Author's Reply - May 25, 2017 - 12:12pm PT
Guy, the simplest measure is this: do the percentage of party representatives for each state reflect what the party percentage of the popular vote is in that state?

If you were to vote on a variety of specific issues, would the distribution of votes of a state's representatives reflect the distribution of popular votes (i.e. sum of individual voters) in that state?

That is simple math- no philosophical or value judgments to be made.

Except the devil is in the details for how much the government funds the Census project, how much that outcome is altered by legal voters avoiding it because of fears of illegal immigrant relatives getting caught, or people being too busy with work to deal with it, etc... and in the end, how much we want the house of representatives to represent the full distribution of the population versus just the legal population versus just the voting population versus just the party that can rig the rules to preserve their power.

So these last questions are value judgments, and are the basis for manipulations and gray areas. But if we have a transparent philosophical conversation about which population the House of Representatives should represent, then the solution should be simple math. The messiness of getting an accurate census (if that is relevant based on the answer to whom the House should represent) can be outsourced as a distinct problem, but the present problem might be dependent on getting that right.
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