caulfield12

In hindsight, it's quite obvious what the GOP SHOULD have done. One up or down vote on repealing the ACA. THEN, you force the Tuesday and House Freedom Caucus members to actually work together on replacing ObamaCare, where all the members have skin in the game and own the disastrous result if they can't even work together within their own party. Now, you have a situation of the "blame game" where everyone simply avoids taking responsibility for the consequences of not simply improving the ACA, whereas now they can simply do everything possible to sabotage ObamaCare and then turn around and say, "gee, look, it's failing, it's the fault of the Dems (and we had no responsibility during those past 7 years to work together in a bipartisan way to fix it." Of course, the GOP will turn around and argue that the strategy of obstruction and complaining about Obama was effective and led to "victories" in almost every two year election cycle except for the 2012 Presidential. They're confusing those victories with the American people wanting the AHCA, and they're DEFINITELY not the same thing. ACA popularity was around 47% in a recent poll, with the AHCA at 30% and falling like a rock in recent days.

The reason why we need single payer and a shared risk pool of all Americans and not by individual state...not to mention the GOP can simply block the stabilization subsidies and then turn around and argue ObamaCare is a failure. The only other way is mandating everyone at least have some form of catastrophic insurance, but that would still be a disaster for those needing essentially services or basically anyone sick or dying. At any rate, the AHCA isn't designed to solve the following AZ problem either, as it will only exacerbate the following problem. HHS data also indicates that average benchmark exchange premiums rose by 25 percent in 2017.3 In many areas around the country, premiums are going up by much more. For example, Arizona has seen a 116 percent increase in premiums for these plans.4 Further, more than a quarter of exchange enrollees were over age 55.5 Because of the relatively high ages and associated high health costs of these enrollees, several insurers have expressed concern that the market has become unstable and will likely worsen in coming years if these trends are not reversed. That is, as premiums increase, younger and healthier enrollees may decline to enroll, while older, less healthy enrollees stay in the system. Without enough younger, healthier enrollees to balance the risk of older, sicker enrollees, premiums could continue to increase rapidly. Fear and uncertainty around market stability has led to the exit of several major insurers from exchange markets across the country. http://www.communicatingforamerica.org/wp-...g-Rationale.pdf

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/obam...-is-next-236433 Six ways the GOP could still salvage health care vote

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 23, 2017 -> 11:58 AM) 8 weeks? They should be working the next day! EDIT: While we're at it, why isn't the infant working!?! Ivanka will fix that one...bigly. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03...p-news&_r=0 According to the latest tally by NYT, they're at least 9 votes short. The big question now is whether they allow this to linger on through Monday or simply pull it.

Range of 24-32 "no" votes across eight different media organization as of Thursday morning. GOP can only afford to lose 22 votes. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03...p-news&_r=0 Trending in the direction of more no's piling up than yes gains.

There's just no way they should even be voting without getting a CBO preliminary scoring first...the ACA deliberations took 6-7 months, whereas this has basically been a 2 week process, and less than 24 hours without a CBO reading for the 'revised' House bill. That's crazy, when you look at the potential impacts on tens of millions of Americans.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/race-america-whi...-200757784.html A white Army veteran traveled from Maryland to New York City to kill a black man to "make a statement" in the media capital of the world, New York Police Department officials said Wednesday. James Harris Jackson, 28, turned himself in at a Manhattan police station after he stabbed his victim on a sidewalk. Jackson was carrying a handful of knives in his pocket when he arrived at the police station, Reuters reported. Shortly after coming across Timothy Caughman, who was searching through garbage on the street, he stabbed him in the chest and back, police said. Jackson told police he left Baltimore Friday and traveled to New York City by bus "because it is the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement," Bill Aubrey, a deputy chief at the New York Police Department, told reporters. "It was revealed that the attack on Timothy Caughman was clearly racially motivated. It is believed that he was specifically intending to target male blacks." Caughman, 66, died at a local hospital where he was being treated for his injuries. On his Twitter page, he called himself a “can and bottle recycler” and “autograph collector.” He lived in transitional housing for people with HIV/AIDS, the New York Daily News reported. He went by the nickname "Hard Rock"

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 22, 2017 -> 06:25 PM) Freedom Caucus demanding that funding for mental health and maternal Care be cut in exchange for their votes. https://twitter.com/JoanAlker1/status/844697870074871809 Remember, their eternal deflection whenever someone kills a bunch of people with a gun is "mental health!" We're run by a death cult. Removing the provision could also greatly weaken the law's protection of those with pre-existing conditions. Without the requirement to cover comprehensive policies, insurers could opt exclude some of the priciest services that sick Americans need. Carriers would also no longer have to cover annual exams and preventative tests free of charge. House leadership did not originally include it because doing so would likely run afoul of Senate rules governing budget reconciliation, the procedure being used to avoid a Democratic filibuster that Republicans won't be able to break. (Not to mention the whole Planned Parenthood gutting probably won't make it past the Senate parliamentarian, either). http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/ess...ucus/index.html It's quite obvious they want a "political win" to get the bill to the Senate and not completely cripple Trump's presidency...they've only succeeded in giving themselves SOME degree of political cover by going on record as voting to repeal ObamaCare, even if, in the process of doing so, they've guaranteed failure of the ultimate bill. So you simply have a repeat of 2010, except this time with zero Democrats voting for the legislation. And, if you set out to intentionally create a system that would end up DEMONSTRABLY WORSENING the health outcomes of a majority of Americans, this is probably close to what you'd come up with as a result.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 22, 2017 -> 07:51 PM) The latest health care cut Republicans are weighing, explained http://www.vox.com/2017/3/22/15030214/esse...-reconciliation Isn't the change where they're not cutting, but providing (for example) people over 50 an opportunity to buy cheaper insurance that doesn't provide maternity/pediatric care? One of the issues with the ACA was the fact that everyone had to buy the same package, whether they needed those various coverages or not (like the seniors not needing maternity/pediatric care)... Of course, the argument against this is an obvious one. If you're allowed to pick and choose whatever you need specifically and throw everything else out, it raises the premiums for everyone else because the costs of providing services in those areas can't be borne only by those affected by having a baby or getting sick. That's pretty much the whole purpose of insurance, nobody actually WANTS to buy it, whether it's for their car or house or whatever, and we don't expect to get all the money we pay into the system back in the form of benefits, because no private insurance market can survive paying out more benefits than it receives in premiums. Because that 55-64 age group was going to be totally screwed under the AHCA, in the last 24-48 hours they're apparently looking to provide more subsidies to counterbalance the huge rate increases and/or obscuring the argument by attempting to get rid of a lot of the medical services covered under ACA to make it seem like seniors theoretically might be getting at least a semi "decent" (probably not better, though) deal under the new Ryan health care plan. Trump asked King why he couldn’t vote for the bill. King responded he didn’t think it would lower insurance premiums enough. But King then floated a potential deal to Trump: If the president would publicly back amending the bill to deregulate the health care industry, King would change his vote. Trump agreed, and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) picked up a desperately needed vote. With one day to go until the biggest vote of his brief presidency, Trump is using all the trappings of his office to try to clinch the needed 215 votes. It’s unclear whether it will be enough to save the legislation. But late Wednesday, the White House floated a major change to the bill in a bid to win over roughly three dozen House conservatives. It was over the same issue King had raised in the White House meeting earlier in the day. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trum...-debacle-236380 Yeah, like Trump's actually going to deregulate the health care industry...I can't believe Steve King is a real person.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/us-...ians/index.html The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, US officials told CNN. One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests "people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready." But other U.S. officials who spoke to CNN say it's premature to draw that inference from the information gathered so far since it's largely circumstantial. The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said. On the plus side, there are 50-100 Scion Hotels (representing Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka) planned in the US over the next 3-4 years. First one will apparently be in Dallas. Many cities like Seattle are basically saying "over my dead body" will a Trump/Scion branded hotel be coming to their community. Suggested prices will be a much more "reasonable" $200-300 USD per night, about half the normal Trump-branded rate.

WSJ Editorial: Most Americans May Conclude Trump "Fake" President http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/don...rust/index.html https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-presidents-c...lity-1490138920 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/matt...ns-obama-236329 GOP frustrated with Mattis for not wanting all Repub staffers and not pushing for even higher DOD budget increases

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Mar 21, 2017 -> 10:32 PM) I guess the same could be said about the World Cup. Except you can't name more than a few non-injured international stars who have ever skipped a World Cup. This isn't even the second or third best team the US could potentially send out there, particularly on the pitching side.

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda. Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska, but he was not aware of the work described in the memos. Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign. Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine "at the highest levels of the U.S. government — the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department," according to the documents. He also said he had hired a "leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client's interests," but he did not identify the firm. Manafort also said he was employing unidentified legal experts for the effort at leading universities and think tanks, including Duke University, New York University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges. Deripaska owns Basic Element Co., which employs 200,000 people worldwide in the agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, and he runs one of the world's largest aluminum companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $5.2 billion. How much Deripaska paid Manafort in total is not clear, but people familiar with the relationship said money transfers to Manafort amounted to tens of millions of dollars and continued through at least 2009. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret payments publicly. In strategy memos, Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would benefit from lobbying Western governments, especially the U.S., to allow oligarchs to keep possession of formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine. He proposed building "long term relationships" with Western journalists and a variety of measures to improve recruitment, communications and financial planning by pro-Russian parties in the region.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 21, 2017 -> 12:15 PM) Thats right, the only thing they said was the NSA and FBI had no evidence of votes being switched or the machines being hacked. Pretty sure that was never in question. LOVE how that has been skewed to mean there is no evidence they directly influenced the election. One of the GOP Congressmen went through the charade of listing off 10-12 swing states one by one to get this on record. The most bizarre part was Trump live tweeting and then at least one of his tweets being directly added to the questioning...which was another one of the many non-answers. Also, wonder how long before Flynn, Page, Manafort or Stone crack/flip on Trump if threatened with prosecution? Of course, you have all the Trumpites vowing a civil war (listening to c-span) if the Pence/Ryan/Priebus cabal gets The Donald impeached to push him out of the way so their shadow government can officially come out into the light. One day, it's the Obama Deep State subverting and sabotaging. Now it's his own party. The irony is that many believe Trump will try to cut lose Ryan when the AHCA proves to be a disaster or doesn't even make it out of the Senate. Breitbart's been attacking Ryan mercilessly these days, under Bannon's "secret" orders.

White House says Republicans who oppose the health care bill "will probably pay a price at home" Spicer said Republicans who vote against the GOP's health care bill "will probably pay a price at home." He didn’t rule out Trump campaigning against those Republicans. "You can’t go promise over and over again" and not deliver, Spicer said. "This was a major component in the last election, and I think there was not a single Republican member who went out and talked about this." www.cnn.com http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ep-state-214935 Why Steve Bannon Wants You To Believe In the Deep State http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/world/electr...trnd/index.html Fallout from electronics ban...with stories of affected families. Can't imagine having young kids used to traveling with their iPad games on a 10+ hour flight and having that taken away as an option...or all the complaints we'll see about electronics being stolen from checked baggage in processing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page...-dossier-2017-1 One obvious area (besides Manafort and Flynn) is this Carter Page issue with the brokerage over a supposed 19% sale of Rosneft (Russian state oil monopoly) A dossier with unverified claims about President Donald Trump's ties to Russia contained allegations that Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia's state oil company, offered former Trump ally Carter Page and his associates the brokerage of a 19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia. The dossier says the offer was made in July, when Page was in Moscow giving a speech at the Higher Economic School. The claim was sourced to "a trusted compatriot and close associate" of Sechin, according to the dossier's author, former British spy Christopher Steele. "Sechin's associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft," the dossier said. "In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted." The sale of that 19.5% share in Rosneft to Qatar (sovereign wealth fund) and Glencore (Australia) was for $11.3 billion (in December)...so just 3% of that total would be $339 million dollars going to Carter Page and his Republican associates, in exchange for assurances from Page that the new Trump administration would eventually lift the sanctions on Russia (which would be a VERY cheap price to pay, especially when considering the total amount in damages to the Russian economy since the Obama admin put those sanctions in place, AND since SOMEONE had to broker the deal anyway and EARN a massive commission) Meanwhile, Paul Manafort is wanted for questioning by the FBI and in KIEV, UKRAINE. And Ivanka's finally getting her own West Wing office but won't be a government employee...raising more thorny ethics questions http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/ivan...te-house-236273 Trump’s role, according to her attorney Jamie Gorelick, will be to serve as the president’s “eyes and ears” while providing broad-ranging advice, not just limited to women’s empowerment issues. Last week, for instance, Trump raised eyebrows when she was seated next to Angela Merkel for the German chancellor’s first official visit to Trump’s White House. As her role in the White House grows — a role that comes with no playbook — Trump plans to adhere to the same ethics and records retention rules that apply to government employees, Gorelick said, even though she is not technically an employee. But ethics watchdogs immediately questioned whether she is going far enough to eliminate conflicts of interest, especially because she will not be automatically subjected to certain ethics rules while serving as a de facto White House adviser. People close to Ivanka Trump said that she sees nothing unusual about the arrangement — it’s simply how she has worked with her father for years, as a senior official at the Trump Organization and as Donald Trump’s partner on “The Apprentice.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/201...-for-11-billion

Now, what the heck are they planning to do about North Korea? This time, an engine/thrust test was successfully run in the last 24 hours that theoretically puts them in the ballpark of being able to deliver an ICBM in the general vicinity of the West Coast. All done while Tillerson's in China to meet with the leadership there. REAL NEWS: Trump/Bannon secretly hope to kill two birds with one stone, DPRK nuclear attack taking out multitudes of Democratic voters in California while simultaneously giving the administration cover to go to war in Asia. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/tru...ing-break-aspen Over the weekend, the Trump Kids flew to Aspen, Colorado. In tow were Don Jr., his wife, and their five kids; Ivanka and her three kids (her husband, Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to her father, stayed behind in Washington. It was this week, after all.) Eric and his wife joined, too. Unfortunately, unlike trips past, the extended Trumps now require a great deal of Secret Service protection. Over the weekend The Aspen Times reported that about 100 Secret Service agents were expected to travel with them. As a matter of protocol, the Secret Service would not comment on the number of agents it sent to protect the First Family. A representative told me I would have to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to find out how much the government spent on sending agents on a Trump spring break. Bill Linn, an assistant chief of police in the town of Aspen, said that the Secret Service had been in touch with the police department and had not asked for any kind of support. Another New York mom who took her kids to Aspen for the week said that with so many agents about, it is hard to get around the mountain. Because the Trump group is so big, and security is so tight, it’s harder to score tables at the few local restaurants at which New Yorkers normally dine. Traffic, too, they said, is a nightmare. (Linn said that there were no reports filed about traffic related to a dignitary visit, but that traffic has been challenging). About 40 or so locals threw together a last-minute protest on Main Street—for “All That Is Right and Good”—when they heard about the First Family’s visit. Trump advisor Roger Stone a hot topic of conversation Monday at the hearings... “Director Comey, are you aware that Roger Stone played a role in the Trump campaign?” Schiff asked. “I’m not going to talk about any particular person here today, Mr. Schiff,” Comey responded. But Schiff pressed. “Are you aware that he has publicly acknowledged to have communicated with Guccifer 2.0, someone the intelligence community has assessed was a persona of Russian intelligence?” Schiff continued. “I’ve read media accounts to that effect. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings in the media, I don’t know if that is accurate or not,” Comey said. Guccifer 2.0 is believed to be the Russian hacker who stole DNC emails and released them through Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. SCHIFF: “Mr. Stone, on August 17th, received a communication from Guccifer 2.0 that said ‘I’m pleased to say that you are great. Please tell me if I can help you anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me.’ Are you aware of that communication from essentially Russian GRU through Guccifer to Mr. Stone?” COMEY: “I have to give you the same answer.” SCHIFF: “Are you aware that Mr. Stone also stated publicly that he was in direct communication with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?” COMEY: “Same answer.” SCHIFF: “Are you aware that Mr. Stone also claimed he was in touch with an intermediary of Mr. Assange?” COMEY: “Same answer.” SCHIFF: “In early October, are you aware Mr. Stone tweeted I have total confidence that my hero Julian Assange will educate the American peoples soon. Are you aware of that tweet?” COMEY: “Back to my original same answer.” http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/03/20/roger...ring-on-russia/

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/220027096/ra...ealing-catches/ That Gary Matthews, Jr., play to me is the best...some cool videos to remind us of the recent past. Hawk's excitement was crazy there.

Yeah, Sing Street was really good. Of course, the main character's a bit annoying, but the supporting characters like his brother and g/f make up for that. For someone who grew up really enjoying New Order/Joy Division and the music that came out of the UK in the 1980's, it's always fun to watch retro-feeling movies like that.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Mar 19, 2017 -> 01:06 AM) Get Out was good and worth seeing, but I think it's a bit overrated. Not some amazing film that is a "run to the theater ASAP" type film for me. Yeah, after reading all the reviews, expected a bit more. Obviously, the social satire/commentary part got a lot of the credit, but it's not like that movie is decidedly much better than The Purge series, for example.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/19/opinions/tru...llah/index.html Donald Trump: America's Marie Antoinette https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-approval-ra...topstories.html Trump Gallup approval rating down to 37%, 58% disapproval (lowest ever for a new president at this early point) President Bill Clinton hit the 37 percent rating about five months into his first term, in June 1993, and Ronald Reagan dipped below it in January 1983, about a year after he took the oath of office. It took George H.W. Bush more than three years to fall to 37 percent, which he did in June 1992. And Richard Nixon, who resigned at 24 percent, first sunk below 37 percent in the first year of his second term, in August 1973, as the Watergate scandal raged. The lowest job approval ever recorded by Gallup was 22 percent, the public's assessment of Harry Truman's performance in February 1952, nearly 7 years into his presidency. https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-arrested-str...-174013563.html Strobe light attack via Twitter causes life-threatening seizure to former NYT anti-Trump reporter The authorities also found an altered Wikipedia page in Rivello's iCloud account that showed a fake obituary for Eichenwald with a death date of December 16. Eichenwald's lawyer Steven Lieberman said the use of a strobe light against a known epileptic was "no different than a bomb sent in the mail or anthrax sent in an envelope," according to The New York Times, where Eichenwald spent years as an investigative reporter. That made the incident different from other cyberstalking cases, where the intent is to cause psychological -- not explicitly physical -- harm. Eichenwald, 55, has some 319,000 Twitter followers. He had been critical of Trump throughout the presidential campaign last year. When his wife found him on the floor on December 15, she first called 911, and then alerted the authorities to the message from "@jew_goldstein." Eichenwald was incapacitated for days, lost feeling in one hand, and had trouble speaking for weeks, his lawyer told The Times. Since the attack, Eichenwald said, 40 more accounts have sent him strobe lights messages. He has passed their information to the FBI.

Fulmer's fastball was at 93 today...but that's not good enough without his secondary stuff and location. Still not convinced he will last as a starter, but he'll certainly get plenty of opportunities to prove everyone wrong. And, at least we have Kopech, Lopez and Burdi whose stuff is as good or better than advertised.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/rex-...-reports-236214 Tillerson disputes reports of being "low energy" in South Korea https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldvi...m=.826627604af9 Trump apparently didn't realize deadline for Germany to raise military spending to 2% of GDP was actually 2024. But, Germans argue, they make up for this in other ways. As Merkel argued in a speech last month, mutual security goes beyond military spending. International development aid on things like hospitals and schools does as much for peace as warheads in Europe. “When we help people in their home countries to live a better life and thereby prevent crises, this is also a contribution to security,” Merkel said in Munich. “So I will not be drawn into a debate about who is more military-minded and who is less.” She and other German leaders also point out that they’re bearing the brunt of the Syrian refugee crisis, spending 30 to 40 billion euros a year. If that was included in the tally, they say, they’d be putting more than 2 percent of their budget a year toward security. (They’re also quick to note that U.S. military interventions are one reason there are so many displaced people from the Middle East.)

Beauty and the Beast is an exact replica of the 1992 animation with essentially thirty minutes of added scenes, songs and characters. Definitely worth taking the kids too because of the cinematography, but the original cartoon is still my preference...or the 1940's version. Emma Watson, just doesn't quite fit in that role...enjoyed seeing Kevin Kline, and the whole Luke Evans/Josh Gad subplot though. Here in China, they cut the most controversial scene between them for it apparently.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/medicare-ins...WQDBHNlYwNzcg-- Medicare insolvency to move up from 2025 to 2023 under AHCA.