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Member for

24 years 2 months

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You all saw what the last Donald Trump thread descended to. In the end the Webmaster who has zero patience with personal abuse and petty squabbling on a thread sorted it in his own decisive manner.

It is obvious that we can't ignore the doings of the most powerful state on Earth so here is your new thread.

But it is one that will be watched closely. Polite discussion and disagreement welcome, childish squabbling and veiled insults not acceptable. Breaking that rule can result in positive sanctions being applied without warnings.

The content of this post is not a subject for discussion.

Moggy
For the moderation team and the Webmaster

Original post

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12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

I would guess that that little diatribe has effectively shutdown further discussion !

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

No, it has opened up four years (maybe) of polite and intelligent discussion.

Moggy

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17 years 5 months

Posts: 8,980

Naaa, he will be long gone before that time is up, they are looking at impeaching him as we speak, anyway 4 years in Trump speak is 7 years.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

No, it has opened up four years (maybe) of polite and intelligent discussion.

Moggy

Dream on !

Member for

18 years 10 months

Posts: 963

Dream on !

Not helping!!!!!!

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

I'd put money on President Trump not lasting his full-term of four years; maybe two years in office?

Whatever your thoughts about his politics are he isn't a young man and the Trump White House seems already to have reacted very badly to the suggestion that his inauguration wasn't as well attended as the two previous inaugurations for President Obama; instead of just accepting the fact the Trump White House chose to try to dispute the evidence and seemed to want to 'prove' that it wasn't true with a whole host of 'alternative facts'!

The grown-up thing to do would have been to just accept it and say that the Trump White House would let the country judge the President on the decisions he makes over the next few years and their outcome.

Instead, the Trump White House chose to have their Press Office dispute everything and issue some sort of 'warning' to the assembled media; President Trump himself chose his visit to the CIA to insult the media and call them 'the most dishonest human beings on the planet'! On day one in office!

This does not augur well for his future 'popularity'! It is one thing to be in business where people have a choice as to whether they deal with you, it is quite another being President of the United States...

...whatever your policies or their outcomes are, it is going to lead to a huge amount of personal criticism; you had better learn to deal with it and move-on or I'd suggest that you're probably not cut-out for public office!

'The People' have a right to protest.....or to protest by staying-away; that's in the Constitution isn't it?

Member for

12 years 8 months

Posts: 851

There are a number of intersting articles in the US press about the Trump White House press briefing.
Worth reading
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/23/dear-media-the-trump-white-house-has-total-contempt-for-you-time-to-react-accordingly/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.4a5f91aa0622

Even Fox News are saying the 'Alternative facts' approach was on shaky ground

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/23/spicer-set-for-tense-briefing-with-press-after-crowd-size-dispute.html

Member for

14 years 5 months

Posts: 3,447

You know what? I am just going to let it all play out. I will watch this thread to see when the Trump Won America Tribe (I know how much Americans love acronyms) as represented here work it all out for themselves. There's no point anyone going on about it - if we try, we're the enemy.

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18 years 10 months

Posts: 963

Just spilt my beer laughing Beermat, thank you!

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11 years 2 months

Posts: 1,059

Naaa, he will be long gone before that time is up, they are looking at impeaching him as we speak, anyway 4 years in Trump speak is 7 years.

:rolleyes: Really now, so you think so.

The impeachment process plays out in Congress and requires critical votes in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is often said that the “House impeaches and the Senate convicts,” or not. In essence, the House first decides if there are grounds to impeach the president, and if it does, the Senate holds a formal impeachment trial.

In the House of Representatives
•The House Judiciary Committee decides whether or not to proceed with impeachment. If they do...
•The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee will propose a Resolution calling for the Judiciary Committee to begin a formal inquiry into the issue of impeachment.
•Based on their inquiry, the Judiciary Committee will send another Resolution to the full House stating that impeachment is warranted and why (the Articles of Impeachment), or that impeachment is not called for.
•The Full House (probably operating under special floor rules set by the House Rules Committee) will debate and vote on each Article of Impeachment.
•Should any one of the Articles of Impeachment be approved by a simple majority vote, the President will be "impeached." However, being impeached is sort of like being indicted of a crime. There still has to be a trial, which is where the US Senate comes in.

In the Senate
•The Articles of Impeachment are received from the House.
•The Senate formulates rules and procedures for holding a trial.
•A trial will be held. The President will be represented by his lawyers. A select group of House members will serve as "prosecutors." The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (currently John G. Roberts) will preside with all 100 Senators acting as the jury.
•The Senate will meet in private session to debate a verdict.
•The Senate, in open session, will vote on a verdict. A 2/3 vote of the Senate will result in a conviction.
•The Senate will vote to remove the President from office.
•The Senate may also vote (by a simple majority) to prohibit the President from holding any public office in the future.

Senator and Congressmen like their paychecks and power, that alone means your supposition is a wide-eyed indiscretion.
For them to even think of that means their remaining term in Washington would be very short.

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12 years 8 months

Posts: 851

I see Donald has had another "alternative facts" moment. OK perhaps we should call it for what it is?.... untrue

If it were, surely his team would be providing evidence, shouting it from the rooftops. But not a squeak

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/at-white-house-trump-tells-congressional-leaders-3-5-million-illegal-ballots-cost-him-the-popular-vote/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpvotes-0826pm-winner%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.802a3f6b06b2

Member for

11 years 2 months

Posts: 1,059

I see Donald has had another "alternative facts" moment. OK perhaps we should call it for what it is?.... untrue

If it were, surely his team would be providing evidence, shouting it from the rooftops. But not a squeak


IF it were provable, and that is a felony crime, there would be millions being prosecuted including those in California who are the voters he is speaking of, who were in charge of the election.

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12 years 8 months

Posts: 851

And since they are not doing this, that there is no evidence at all, it cannot be provable. Because there is nothing to prove as it did not seem to happened.

That he cannot accept that is the real issue

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11 years 2 months

Posts: 1,059

Andrew Napolitano: Trump has committed the most revolutionary act I've seen in 45 years.

Within four hours of becoming president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to limit immediately the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) in ways that are revolutionary.

With the stroke of a pen, the president assaulted the heart of the law that was the domestic centerpiece of his predecessor’s administration. How did this happen? How can a U.S. president, who took an oath to enforce the laws faithfully, gut one of them merely because he disagrees with it?

Here is the back story.

When Obama Care went through Congress in 2010, all Democrats in Congress supported it and all congressional Republicans were opposed. The crux of their disagreement was the law’s command that everyone in the United States obtain and maintain health insurance -- a command that has come to be known as “the individual mandate.”

Republicans argued that Congress was without the authority to compel people to enter the marketplace by purchasing a product -- that such decisions should be freely made by individuals and that that freedom was protected from governmental interference by the Constitution. Democrats argued that the commerce clause of the Constitution, which permits Congress to regulate commerce among the states, also permits it to compel commercial activity on the part of individuals who make up a highly regulated component of interstate commerce.

To ensure compliance with the individual mandate, the law provided that the IRS would collect the fair market value of a bare-bones insurance policy from those who did not obtain and maintain one. The government would then take that money and purchase a health insurance policy for that individual who rejected the law’s command.

Though Congress did not call it a tax and the government’s lawyers uniformly and consistently denied in all courts where it was challenged that it was a tax and President Barack Obama rejected the idea that it was a tax and even the lawyers for the challengers denied it was a tax, a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court characterized the money collected by the IRS from noncompliant individuals as a tax.

This is profoundly significant for constitutional purposes because though Congress cannot regulate anything it wants, Congress can tax anything it wants, as long as the tax falls equally on those in the class of people who are paying it. This unheard-of characterization of a non-tax as a tax was necessary to salvage Obama Care before the high court because a different 5-4 majority in the same case ruled that the Republican congressional argument was essentially correct -- that the commerce clause does not empower Congress to compel commercial activity.

All of this has been debated loud and long since the law was enacted in 2010, validated by the Supreme Court in 2012 and came into Trump’s crosshairs in the Republican presidential primaries and again in the general election campaign.

Trump argued that the government cannot compel commercial activity, even as part of a large regulatory scheme, because the Constitution protects everyone’s right to purchase a lawful good or not to purchase one. He also asserted that Obama Care does not make economic sense because its regulation of the practice of medicine and its administration of health insurance have resulted in a diminution of choices for consumers, which in turn has raised premiums, as well as deductibles, and chased primary care physicians from the marketplace. The Obama mantra that you could keep your doctor and your health insurance under Obama Care proved to be patently false, Trump argued.

When Trump promised that as president -- on “day one” -- he would begin to dismantle Obama Care, some Republicans, many members of the press and most Democrats laughed at him. They are laughing no longer because the first executive order he signed on Jan. 20 directed those in the federal government who enforce Obama Care to do so expecting that it will soon not exist.

He ordered that regulations already in place be enforced with a softer, more beneficent tone, and he ordered that no penalty, fine, setoff or tax be imposed by the IRS on any person or entity who is not complying with the individual mandate, because by the time taxes are due on April 15, the IRS will be without authority to impose or collect the non-tax tax, as the individual mandate will no longer exist. Why take money from people that will soon be returned?

Then he ordered a truly revolutionary act, the likes of which I have never seen in the 45 years I have studied and monitored the government’s laws and its administration of them. He ordered that when bureaucrats who are administering and enforcing the law have discretion with respect to the time, place, manner and severity of its enforcement, they should exercise that discretion in favor of individuals and against the government.

This is radical coming from any president in the modern era of government-can-do-no-wrong. It is far more Thomas Jefferson, the small-government champion with whom Trump has never been associated, than it is Theodore Roosevelt, the super-regulator whom Trump has stated he admires. It recognizes the primacy and dignity of the individual and the fallibility of the state. It acknowledges the likely demise of Obama Care. It is utterly without precedent since Jefferson’s presidency.

Trump’s revolutionary act is a breeze of freedom on a sea of regulation. It recognizes something modern governments never admit -- that they can be and have been wrong. It is exactly as Trump promised.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey.

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If I wanted to read a Fox opinion piece I'd lobotomise myself and type it into the browser with my bleeding forehead.

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17 years 6 months

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What happens to the people who were being coerced ('taxed') in to minimum health-insurance now; does the state take care of their medical needs (on a need / ability to pay basis) or are they left to fend (pay) for themselves?

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17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

President Trump has certainly moved fast on United States / Mexican relations over 'the wall'; a state visit by the Mexican President was scheduled...

...six hours later, TRADE-WAR! :rolleyes:

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 1,537

There was a very interesting interview on last nights 'This Week' with the new US EU Ambassador, Ted Malloch.

There looks to be some very interesting times ahead for Junker & co!

Cheers

Paul

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 1,537

Gosh, it's up on You Tube already.

As pointed out in the comments below, Michael Portillo makes a very good point at the end.

Cheers

Paul

Member for

11 years 2 months

Posts: 1,059

Some get the insurance and some have decided to pay the penalty, if they come a calling, as it is less than a years insurance.
I have not had insurance since the seventies, although I have cheap free dental plan now that only pays for teeth cleaning.
I would not have that except my sig. sent paper in for it.
I paid for all my actual teeth work out of pocket and still go to the dental school for teeth cleaning as for forty bucks they do a good job rather than the quick in and out the other does.

A woman recently went to her hospital for surgery, this was covered by local news.
The hospital was within the insurance system she had, it is a system not blanket coverage, but the anesthesiologist for her was not part of the insurance system she belonged to.
She got a separate anesthesiology bill for 3,000 dollars that her insurance would not and legally did not have to pay as he
was not part of their system.

My sig. is self employed but fortunately had a serious UTI, docs said had I not taken her to the hospital when I did, she had about 18 hours before all they could do was keep her comfortable till she died, before the current Obama Care system was in effect in Minn.
She paid nothing for two weeks in the hospital and dialysis that lasted for near a month because she was covered by the Minn. State Health policy before they went to Obama Care.
Had it happened a month later she would be up ****e creak without a paddle. Under Obama Care the policy that cared for her was ended and she would have been technically covered by nothing so the bill would have all been hers.
The really odd thing is due to the soon coming Obama Care system, her insurance policy had cancelled her, and everyone else, and she was then covered by Minn. Care, which is now dead.
It was a system to help those who had a catastrophic illness but no or not enough insurance to pay for it.
Under Obama Care if they offer insurance in your State they cannot refuse to cover you but they can simply drop all insurance coverage in a State, any State, hers did.
One would not think that a blessing but for her it was.

I have a cousin who is now on his fourth insurance company. His cost has tripled.
The other three companies all simply packed up and left the State. Each replacement was higher than the one before with larger deductibles.
As his is now, or at least the last one I know of, the first 3,000 dollars is his problem, after that they kick in but only if the hospital or doctor who treats them is in their system.
He is a diabetic and totally screwed himself over when he had his gall bladder removed even though it still functioned.
After years of misery, which docs told him this year may never go away due his missing gall bladder and diabetic medicine, he found out that his problems were not his gall bladder but kidney stones.
A good friend who just retired from being an anesthesiologist said he had a good case for a lawsuit, which others had said years before as his doctor at the time told him his problem was his gall bladder and was the one who cut it out.
But even if he had found out earlier, this is a person who if the doctor says crap, he drops his pants and squats.

Minnesota was known for having one of the best State run health policies but when our Liberal Gov. and the Dem. that controlled the State at that time decided Obama Care was better than the plan that had been there for decades, it all died.
Now we still have the same Dem. Gov. although he fainted while giving the State of the State address but Dem. lost control of both the State Legislature and Congress due the cluster-fk that the plan that replaced it has been.