StrangeSox

Travel ban blocked again, citing the admins own words for intent https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cn...cked/index.html Thank God they are so incompetent. https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/84215...src=twsrc%5Etfw Lol At his campaign rally in Nashville today, Trump himself described the second ban as a watered down version of the first one. https://twitter.com/aterkel/status/842170208462733312

There are so many models that are better than what's essentially 18th century England with an elected monarch

Netherlands Election exit polls are filtering out, and it looks like Geert Wilders' far-right anti-Islam party fell into a three-way tie for 2nd place with 19 seats in parliament. As recently as last week. his party was leading the incumbent VVD party. It's a possible sign that the tide of right-wing populism has been stemmed in Europe, but the big one to watch is still the upcoming French elections. http://www.dw.com/en/dutch-pm-ruttes-vvd-e...poll/a-37937959 If you like multi-party systems, the Dutch elections have several dozen parties running and over a dozen will get seats in parliament. They have a proportional representation system with a parliament, so you're voting for a given party rather than a particular candidate, and seats are allocated to a party based on their percentage share of the electorate. Turnout in the Netherlands will be well over 70%.

In a Repudiation of Trump, a Senior House Leader Rejects Wiretap Claim

Even without reading the dateline on this article, this is how you know how old it is: "“This is the most transparent administration in history,” Obama said during a Google Plus “Fireside” Hangout." His admin was hypocritical on this after his initial campaigning and even what they claimed during their time in office.

Maddow did make an ass of herself though. Big, actually important stories just drop without a bunch of build-up and hype. That said, if/when Trump and the rest of the GOP push for getting rid of the AMT, Democrats could potentially point to this 1040 from 12 years ago and point out that he'd have only paid less than 4% in taxes without the AMT. I'm sure they'll mess it up somehow, though.

Bears 2017 - Not Historically Bad!

Scotland making more Independence noise again http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/polit...u-a7626746.html Northern Ireland party Sinn Fein calling for unification vote. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/iri...-féin-1.3009166

The White House is flat out rejecting the cbo scoring. Their own estimates were even worse. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/obam...te-house-236019

Rabbit you also keep misusing the word "bipartisan." It's clear what you mean from context, but the word you're looking for is partisan. Bipartisan would be used to describe a collaborative effort, eg "the Patriot act passed with bipartisan support."

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 08:40 PM) The Presidency is not a software program. It is, more than anything else, about influence and thought leadership. What a President says has enormous effect. It causes others to act. Words of Presidents create policy, but they also point his administration, and the party he leads, and everyday Americans in a direction. He signals what is OK and what isn't, and people act accordingly - some of whom have enormous power to effect people's lives. Frankly I find it stunning that you don't see that. As for your last graf, most of that read like conspiratorial nonsense to me. Never broach the debt? I've seen that topic discussed in WSJ and WaPo at the least, and I'd guess the NYT has too (though I don't know off hand). And talking heads on TV discuss it regularly. Military murders not covered? You can't be serious here, that stuff is splashed all over the news all the time, as soon as something happens. Government spies on the whole country? What evidence do you have they have been spying outside the bounds of the laws on Americans? I am sure it happens but the idea that it's rampant is not supported by any facts I have seen. The Federal Reserve? That's a huge topic of conversation all over the media, especially when they have their meetings (maybe I'm seeing that one more in financial sections, but that's of course where it belongs). Does the media ALSO waste a bunch of time on garbage? Yeah, especially the CNN's of the world. The whole political conversation in this country centered around the debt and deficits for years during the middle of Obama's presidency. The mainstream media also covers fed meetings and announcements on what they're going to do with rate hikes, and back when it was a bigger issue quantitative easing was covered as well.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 08:28 PM) What Trump says on policy is relevant. I used an example about healthcare to say exactly that. What Trump says on Obama's birth certificate, quibbles about the election, etc. This stuff doesn't matter. If it's unsubstantiated, he'll look dumb. Regardless, no lives are affected by the things he said that are unrelated to policy and his job. He said the stuff about illegal immigrants voting for HRC. The media spent a full week on it. People in here are still talking about it. Absolutely nothing happened as a result. No policy, no lives changed, no liberties taken, etc. If we were in an argument about his character, then yes, I suppose that would be relevant to that one fruitless, irrelevant conversation. That being said, nobody in this subforum other than maybe brad have ever spoken highly of Trump's character. We have people here who honestly believe he's Hitler reincarnate with some rape mixed in. We had people say Trump being elected was the worst day of their life based off of things he had said. These things are not relevant to the real, serious problems in this country. The whole TMZ politics stuff is a big problem because all it does is distract from the real problems. The fact that the corporate media will spend days covering some dumb comment Trump made that is totally irrelevant to anything meaningful is a problem. They will never broach the debt in any meaningful way, they will never cover the way the military is murdering civilians in an accurate way, they will never cover how the government spies on the whole country without maligning the character of Snowden/WL/Assange first (why?) and they will never cover the Federal Reserve, but they will spend day after day dissecting some sub 140 character comment that Trump made on Twitter that has no effect on anything that matters. Nobody sees this as a problem. Trump launched a voter fraud investigation that is under way. Just because something didn't happen immediately doesn't mean it has no effect.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 07:17 PM) There you go with the ad hominem. You can't ever keep it civil. You don't have to call names when you can't back your own posts up. I'm going to go eat this steak now. I'll talk to you three minutes after the next time I post in the filibuster. Point out the ad hominem. Point out the support for your claims against wapo.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 06:54 PM) Are you still not backing your claim? Hey man I'm not the one trying to say Obama being wrong about Trump's ability to be elected is equivalent to Trump claiming Obama was a Kenyan usurper or that millions of people voted illegally for Clinton. That's a pretty big category error.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 06:53 PM) You said WaPo didn't selectively edit his testimony. I didn't make any points on Sessions or any ramifications. You don't need to expand your argument. Back up your claim. If you are using a pedantically literal definition of "selectively edit" to mean they didn't just post the entire raw transcript from an hours long confirmation hearing and not actually insinuating that they misleadingly edited it to mean something sessions didn't say, then I will concede that you are correct on this irrelevant point. Otherwise, you're the one who made the initial claim against wapo, so the burden is on you.

Are you actually equating a prediction being wrong with making outright false claims about voter fraud and the president being an illegal usurper? E: the GOP has been engaged in voter suppression for a while now, and the president of the united States is now leading that charge with completely unsubstantiated claims. Do you think that makes no difference? Trump, in his battle with the media, has called for opening up libel laws and has more or less threatened to destroy the independent press. Does that make no difference?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 06:42 PM) Thanks for the evidence. Pull up an article where WaPo offers the full transcript or the full video of his hearing. You won't. Why haven't they focused on any of the other double digit amount of countries Sessions spoke with both formally and incidentally in his role on the Armed Services Committees? Why just Russia? I am outraged that he had multiple conversations with ambassadors from Poland! Without knowing what these conversations were about, I have to assume it was to undermine the Clinton campaign! I'll give you a headstart on your googling: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrom...+sessions&* Within that google search you can see how fair and objective their reporting on Sessions as been. Wapo reported on the attorney general voluntarily perjuring himself because that's a big story. Him meeting with random ambassadors isn't, and it wouldn't have been much of a story if sessions hadn't explicitly lied about it. The full transcript does not put his response in any better light. Here's a link to a wapo story that quotes the relevant part of the testimony. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politic...m=.ccee63bfedaa Explain how they've taken this out of context and how the full context changes the answer.

Rabbit I honestly don't know why you think that the allegations that Russia influenced the election via the hacking has been disproven despite being the overwhelming consensus of the intelligence community, because it hasn't, and I also don't get why you think that's the extent of the Russian allegations against Trump and his campaign and administration. E: does WikiLeaks "impeccable track record" include the time they doxxed teenage rape victims or when they leaked the names of all of the females in a political party in Turkey?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 06:26 PM) So Trump said 2-3 million illegals voted for HRC or whatever. What happens if he's right? What happens if he's wrong? What is the endgame? What if Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim??? Note that this is an equally ridiculous thing that our president has claimed!

Wapo didn't selectively edit sessions testimony.

Assange also tried to downplay the Panama papers because they made Putin look bad despite being the largest "transparency" document dump reporting ever. Trump flunkey Roger Stone also claimed recently that he had back channel communications with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 04:59 PM) Who is they? Are you ignoring the division within the GOP on this issue. There are plenty of Republicans against Trump's Obamacare-light plan. This plan sucks. Plenty of Republicans in congress have spoke out to say this much. Before I get attacked for having different views, I am on record saying that I hated the plan from the go. This is not a fiscally conservative plan and plenty of conservatives are rejecting it as a result. Trump is threatening to support certain Republicans in the elections in 2018 because all Republicans are pushing this so hard? There's 237 Republicans in the house. They need 218 votes to get it through. I think Paul, Cotton and all of the other speaking out can get 19 republicans to vote against it. With everyone freaking out the CBO report, that stuff is such a waste of tax dollars. To act as if they can pinpoint how the plan would work in execution is ridiculous regardless of which party is in charge. There are thousands of variable factors that go into it. For instance, when the CBO put out their report on the ACA it said we would have nearly 10 million more people on Obamacare at this point. That is a pretty significant error in calculation. I am sure they weren't aware that people wouldn't be able to sign up for Obamacare for however long they couldn't get their website going when the CBO did their report. The plan sucks, hopefully the 19 or so needed house republicans come forward and vote against it. The answer to that question would be "the Republicans who are pushing for this," which would include the Speaker of the House and the President. Multiple people in this thread have already discussed some of the internal conflicts and the hurdle for it to clear the Senate, so this isn't new information. CBO reports aren't a waste of money, but is there some other non-governmental analysis you'd accept as a fair and reasonable estimate instead? e: bill is most likely to pass the House but fail in the Senate imo, much smaller margin for losing votes and several GOP Senators have expressed concerns even before the CBO report.

A handy chart of the uninsured rate over time:

He'll be fine once he hits 65 and goes on Medicare! ...if Medicare survives the next four years. Good news, though! In 2020, we actually see premiums start to decrease a bit because they've culled the risk pools by throwing 26 million people off of insurance and have allowed insurance companies to charge old people obscene amounts and offer garbage plans that technically count as 'insurance'! And it reduces the deficit (by cutting health care for millions on Medicaid)! QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 13, 2017 -> 04:20 PM) You know. Rich people getting more rich Oh it definitely includes some healthy tax cuts for the wealthy. But they could have done that via tax reform without making a bill that looks like its designed to kill old and poor people. holy moley

CBO report is out. Some choice conclusions: Roughly double the uninsured rate in less than a decade. 52 million uninsured by 2026. Why are they pushing so hard for this bill??