American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Illuminaughty

That's a bit extreme, even for this thread.

Umm...no. It was actually a legitimate answer to his question given the criteria he specified regarding discrediting the media and pushing their own stories as truth. Lügenpresse was a German term for false(fake) news which Hitler used during his rise to power, and unless I'm mistaken I don't think the Jews were to blame for all the problems Germany faced leading up to the holocaust, so I consider that an example of them pushing their own stories as truth. You're free to disagree with me, although I'm not sure how it's possible to deny these facts.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Make War Crimes Great Again!

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is downgrading the U.S. campaign against mass atrocities, shuttering the Foggy Bottom office that worked for two decades to hold war criminals accountable, according to several former U.S. officials.

Tillerson’s office recently informed Todd Buchwald, the special coordinator of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, that he is being reassigned to a position in the State Department’s office of legal affairs, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the move. Buchwald, a career State Department lawyer, has served in the position since December 2015.

The remaining staff in the office, Buchwald was told, may be reassigned to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the former official told Foreign Policy.

The decision to close the office comes at a time when America’s top diplomat has been seeking to reorganize the State Department to concentrate on what he sees as key priorities: pursuing economic opportunities for American businesses and strengthening U.S. military prowess. Those changes are coming at the expense of programs that promote human rights and fight world poverty, which have been targeted for steep budget cuts.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/17/...crimes-office/

[photon]

I guess don't want to seem hypocritical?

According to an Airwars investigation conducted for The Daily Beast, at least 2,300 civilians were killed by coalition strikes from 2015 until the end of Obama's term earlier this year. But as of July 13, roughly six months into Trump's presidency, over 2,200 civilians have likely died from coalition strikes.

That translates to roughly 80 civilian casualties each month in Iraq and Syria during the Obama White House; during Trump's short tenure in the White House, it's been roughly 360 per month.



https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ess-six-months

[Senator Clay Davis]

Healthcare appears to be dead as the GOP has now lost four votes in the Senate. It would appear that White House lawn celebration of the House passing their version of healthcare will be Donnie's "Mission Accomplished" moment, and he managed to do it 10 full months before W. did. He's breaking (stupidity) records at an amazing pace. Who says he's not doing well?

[ResAlien]

As long as the Republicans control both houses they can circle back to this time and time again. There's plenty of opportunities left for their votes to be bought and sold before 2018.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Healthcare right now is one of the rarest things in America: Something with a worse approval rating than Trump, Paul Ryan or Mitch McConell. Most likely now it's either sabotage Obamacare, or simply repeal it. But the GOP will not be submitting or passing a healthcare plan before 2019 at a minimum. Mostly going to be interesting to see where they go next and whether it's another struggle like this, and of course we cannot wait to see how Donnie takes the L.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Healthcare right now is one of the rarest things in America: Something with a worse approval rating than Trump, Paul Ryan or Mitch McConell. Most likely now it's either sabotage Obamacare, or simply repeal it. But the GOP will not be submitting or passing a healthcare plan before 2019 at a minimum. Mostly going to be interesting to see where they go next and whether it's another struggle like this, and of course we cannot wait to see how Donnie takes the L.

Doing nothing may end up sabotaging Obamacare anyway. If Anthem pulled out nationally because of all the uncertainty of the law going forward, then it could be a situation where millions people literally have no health insurance options available to them at any cost. Would they still have to pay the penalty for not having insurance?

As someone who has friends and loved ones on Obamacare, I guess I am hoping for the moderate Republicans to pass something not quite horrible, as the other scenarios might be even bleaker.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Well that was fast...



It seems highly unlikely the Dems will work on anything that isn't augmenting Obamacare. Are there really 25 or so in Congress willing to make it happen? I would think they can find three votes in the Senate, but then of course Ted Cruz and company will simply fillibuster it and then things could get real ugly.

[oldschoolcalgary]

Biggest irony for me is that the voting to take away healthcare from tens of millions of people is hinging, potentially, on an 80 year old whose life was just saved by healthcare...

One can only hope that "The Maverick" has a moment of empathy while recovering in his hospital suite and he'll vote against Trump/Ryancare.

EDIT: as of 8:30 ish, Senators Jerry Moran and Mike Lee have publicly stated they will not support the new senate bill... add in Paul Rand's no vote, and the Bill is dead.

the reconciliation window is now closed and the bill has to go back to the house from my understanding...

just waiting for official word but if Moran and Lee stick to their word, its dead

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/politi...lee/index.html

[photon]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

As long as the Republicans control both houses they can circle back to this time and time again. There's plenty of opportunities left for their votes to be bought and sold before 2018.

If they get input from Democrats to get 60 votes for sure, but the reconciliation process that they wanted to use (so they only had to get 50 votes) is limited.

Under Senate interpretations of the Congressional Budget Act, the Senate can consider the three basic subjects of reconciliation — spending, revenues, and debt limit — in a single bill or multiple bills, but it can consider each of these three in only one bill per year (unless Congress passes a second budget resolution). Consequently, in the Senate there can be a maximum of three reconciliation bills in a year, one for each of the basic subjects of reconciliation.

This rule is most significant if the first reconciliation bill that the Senate takes up affects both spending and revenues. Even if that bill is overwhelmingly devoted to only one of those subjects, no subsequent reconciliation bill can affect either revenues or spending because the first bill already addressed them.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federa...reconciliation

I've heard a number of podcases though say that if Trumpcare isn't passed before the August recess then it's permanently dead, but I don't know if that's just hyperbole, or if there's something involving these rules going on that I haven't read about.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

Biggest irony for me is that the voting to take away healthcare from tens of millions of people is hinging, potentially, on an 80 year old whose life was just saved by healthcare...

One can only hope that "The Maverick" has a moment of empathy while recovering in his hospital suite and he'll vote against Trump/Ryancare.

Maybe they can accidentally implant a backbone for him while he is there.

[photon]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Would they still have to pay the penalty for not having insurance?

I'm pretty sure they aren't paying a penalty now anyway, Trump signed an EO to tell the IRS to stop enforcing the penalty. Which is one of the big sources of uncertainty for insurance companies.

I'm sure Trump didn't realize sabotaging something causes it to fail.

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

EDIT: as of 8:30 ish, Senators Jerry Moran and Mike Lee have publicly stated they will not support the new senate bill... add in Paul Rand's no vote, and the Bill is dead.

the reconciliation window is now closed and the bill has to go back to the house from my understanding...

just waiting for official word but if Moran and Lee stick to their word, its dead

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/politi...lee/index.html

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Given that McConnell has conceded it sounds like it's pretty official, no?

[Senator Clay Davis]

How did no one post Trump's Truck Adventures, part 2 yet? Gotta be a dump truck or garbage truck next

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Given that McConnell has conceded it sounds like it's pretty official, no?

It would appear so?

I wasn't sure if they would try to rally votes during McCain's recovery, but didn't see that McConnell had publicly conceded....but you are right it looks officially dead

[wittynickname]

McConnell has given up on the vote for the BCHA, but according to AP, he's now just going to return to a 2015 vote to repeal the ACA without any plans of replacement. Because healthcare was going so well before the ACA.

[Senator Clay Davis]

All I can think seeing this one is "Have you seen my baseball?!?!?"

[photon]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Given that McConnell has conceded it sounds like it's pretty official, no?

Conceded the repeal and replace, but now he says they're going to do worse:

"In the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period,"

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare...ed-replacement

That'll get the extreme right votes back in, but they didn't have support enough to do that to begin with, why should they have it now? The moderates won't vote for completely removing expansion if they wouldn't vote for reducing it.

[Illuminaughty]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Umm...no. It was actually a legitimate answer to his question given the criteria he specified regarding discrediting the media and pushing their own stories as truth. Lügenpresse was a German term for false(fake) news which Hitler used during his rise to power, and unless I'm mistaken I don't think the Jews were to blame for all the problems Germany faced leading up to the holocaust, so I consider that an example of them pushing their own stories as truth. You're free to disagree with me, although I'm not sure how it's possible to deny these facts.

The mainstream media has done enough over the years to discredit themselves. They have really had it out for Trump (some of it deserving) but it has become quite the circus. He's beating them at their own game in a way.

That's some pretty weak historical fact cherry picking on your part. If that's all it takes for you to compare Trump to Hitler and the GOP to Nazi's, I don't know what to say.