Thought for the Day

[filghy2]

And when California is ravaged by forest fires, people dead, their homes destroyed why is the natural reaction of one Head of State -the President of the USA- zero empathy, abuse, and threats to cut Federal funding in the State concerned, when the natural reaction of the Head of State in the UK was to consider the victims and first responders?
[INDENT] There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018

But it's all because they haven't been out raking the forests Stavros, like they do in Finland. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/11/19...p-raking-woods

If this man was not President, would anyone regard him as anything other than a cranky, delusional, selfish old man?

[buttslinger]

I doubt even of a few years of Psychology classes could fully explain Trump, after all is said and done, he pulled off being elected President, the first public office he ever applied for. I think he's figured out the expiration date on his office is coming two years early, the smell of sulfur and rotting eggs is coming cum January. No more tax breaks for Corporations, no more rallies, no more Nunes. Even Fox News is looking to put a bit of distance between them and Donny Boy. One thing for sure, none of my predictions ever pan out with this guy, he's playing by a different rule book. The one where Saudi Princes give Jared Kushner millions of dollars, I reckon, but I could be wrong.

[Stavros]

Go compare your politicians, be they of 1939 vintage or 2018. Here, on the 80th Anniversary of the Kindertransport, at a time when refugees are being turned away, is the example of one man who at the time, and since, has represented decency in politics.
(Full article in the link).

"Clement Attlee, the Labour prime minister whose government founded the welfare state, looked after a child refugee who escaped from the Nazis in the months leading up to the second world war, it can be revealed.
The then leader of the opposition sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children, giving them the confidence and authorisation to leave Germany in 1939 and move to the UK.
After their escape, Attlee invited one of the children into their home in Stanmore, north-west London, testimony and letters show. He neither publicised nor sought to make political capital from his visitor.
Paul Willer, the former child refugee who is now 90 and living in Gloucestershire, was 10 when he stayed with the Attlees for four months until the beginning of the war.
He has arranged to meet Attlee’s granddaughter for the first time on Wednesday at the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport scheme, which saved thousands of mainly Jewish children from Nazi Germany."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...led-nazis-1939

[Yvonne183]

"Thought for the day"

This site is kinda boring.

Be back in two years, if they let me out, take care Starvos.

[buttslinger]

Maybe things are finally opening up. Real Jailtime for Cohen and Manafort.
Niagara Falls!
slowly they turned...
inch by inch...
step by step....

[broncofan]

The ACA has been overturned by a federal Judge in Texas. The original case to test its constitutionality (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius) hinged mostly on the individual mandate, which requires people to get health insurance or pay a penalty. The idea was that if the law was going to remove pre-existing conditions from the list of things actuaries could consider then there would be an adverse selection problem. To avoid this, people who would otherwise opt out of the market because they're healthy had to be forced to purchase insurance.

This became a Constitutional issue because Congress needs an explicit grant of power from our Constitution to legislate. For this sort of scheme, the usual grant comes from the Commerce Clause. Republicans argued that the Commerce Clause can only be used to regulate commerce, not to force people to engage in it. Therefore, the individual mandate could not be justified as an appropriate use of commerce clause power. Judge Roberts ended up upholding the individual mandate as an appropriate use of Congress' ability to tax. The penalty, he argued, was an appropriate use of the government's ability to tax, and they can regulate using taxes as they often do in order to incentivize or dis-incentivize behaviors in addition to raising revenue.

Fast-forward to more recent times. In their tax bill, Republicans reduced the penalty for the individual mandate to $0. The Texas Judge who overturned the ACA in its entirety reasoned that if the penalty is zero, then it is not a tax and there is no Constitutional authority to pass the individual mandate. Since the mandate justified the pre-existing conditions protection, or at least made it financially more feasible, then the law as a whole must fall. In his argument, the mandate is the linchpin of the law, and is not severable from the other provisions.

There are a lot of problems with his argument. First, the only part of the law that was passed under taxing power authority was the mandate. When the penalty is zero there is no longer authority for that provision but it is also essentially a nullity. When Congress decided to reduce the penalty to zero they no longer needed authority to force people to get insurance because they ARE NOT forcing people to get insurance. Without the ability to declare any portion of the ACA unconstitutional the Judge certainly cannot then strike down the entire law as not being coherent with one provision excised. Congress decided to remove the penalty that enforced the mandate and so the law is exactly as they intended. Does it work better with the mandate? Yes it makes more sense. But Congress decided to essentially remove it. If they decided to remove it, then the Judge is not striking it down as unconstitutional, along with the rest of the law.

I don't really understand the logic of the Texas Judge's opinion very well because most provisions of the ACA don't depend on the mandate anyway, so the argument that the rest of the law is not severable from it also doesn't make sense. I believe even with our new Supreme Court Justices this opinion will be overturned but it will be a very good test of the integrity of our new Justices and a portent of things to come given that their tenure is measured in decades.

[Stavros]

In the USA health care is a business in which a few lucky people make a lot of money from other people's suffering. Until you replace profit with public service, until you create a single-payer service that offers all Americans a standard of health care that applies to them regardless of their economic circumstances, a service which as the name suggests has moral depth rather than commercial width, the USA will be regarded as one of the worst places in the developed world to fall ill or sustain an accident.

But you have a President, and a Party who regard the environment as something to pollute, with coal slurry, chemicals, any old shit as long as it is pumped into your rivers and streams to kill the fish, turn the water yellow and above all, make people hate their land.

You have an immigration policy that is based on hate, that denies the most basic human rights to people in need, that stands idly by when children are torn from their parents and die, because the President and his party wants it that way, they want people to hate America so much they will turn away from it.

You have an apartheid education policy because the President and his party have so deep and abiding a loathing of Black Americans they can't stand the thought that Oliver and Clare will be sitting next to G-Ray and Shaniqua, it is an education policy designed to retard the opportunities that Americans are promised in the Constitution. They hate education when it gives equal opportunities to Black people. What else is the bus for?

You have a foreign policy that is designed to increase the hatred and the venom that people feel for the USA, a policy that supports vicious dictatorships, that applauds illegality and the war on democracy, that provides the Materiel with which men, women and children are bombed to death where they live, their homes, their businesses, their schools and hospitals destroyed. And this carnage, this American Carnage is the promise of a so-called man, in reality a despicable traitor, who invites the world to abuse his country.

For years this person was the butt of ridicule in New York and New Jersey, a grubby loud-mouth with proven links to the New York Mafia and the Russian Mafia, a man who has invented scam after scam after scam to rob people of their money, who for more than 40 years has insulted and abused anyone and everyone who exposes the venal nature of his crooked business affairs. He knew it, and he hated you, as he now sits in the Oval Office determined to shit on your breakfast every day, because he can. He calls an American woman a 'dog', American men are 'sons of bitches' and he knows its crude, and he knows it upsets people because that is his entire intention, to take revenge on the America that recognised from day one that he is a worthless liar, a fraud, a racist, a misogyist, a product of the slime of Queens who, when he discovered the Russians were attacking the USA, had the opportunity to defend America, but chose to join their campaign against the American running for the Presidency in 2016, and he even publicly announced -twice in one day- that he was an A-Grade traitor, knowing his America would do nothing about it.

He hates you, he hates you with an incendiary loathing that is determined to make a Paradise of all your towns and cities and villages because you will not worship him.

Health care? Who cares?

[buttslinger]

I think even the hard-core grits are catching on that Trump is a Comic Book President, like Alfred E Newman. The real threat to the US and the Western World is the 20 trillion dollar deficit, a problem nobody wants to tackle. `
Did you see Pence with Chuck and Nancy? Nick Mulvaney????? The rats are leaving the ship.

[Tom1964]

Not being from the USA myself. Is Donald Trump doing a good job, bad job, or an ok job? I know he's a businessman and does that help with his presidency? I see him on the news here in UK but don't know how he's doing. I would be interested to hear from anyone who lives there.

[dns4809]

look at the stock market...not to good ...he is a CON MAN