Trannies for Trump

[filghy2]

I'd like to hear some attribution of this statement, Giovanni. I believe you'd have to be a great negotiator to make billions in real estate and development - a low-down, underhanded, lying, cheating negotiator who always comes out on top somehow. And bankruptcy is nothing more than just another business strategy in the current era. So instead of simply stating a non-fact, let's hear an actual argument for "Trump is not a great negotiator."

This article debunks the claim that he was a great negotiator in business. http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/donald...t-of-the-deal/ It's been estimated that Trump's net worth is about half what it would have been if he'd simply put his money into a stock market index fund.

Let's consider his record as President:

Exhibit A: Repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump promised to negotiate a deal that would deliver better health insurance coverage at lower cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deal they tried to ram through Congress with Trump's support would have increased premiums and left 32 million people without insurance. Reports indicate that his own Congressional members were unimpressed with his negotiation efforts as he had done no preparation and basically had no idea what he was talking about.

Exhibit B: the North Korean 'deal'. Nothing has actually been agreed other than some vague objectives similar to those in previous agreements that failed to deliver those objectives. North Korea has not yet committed to anything concrete. Yet Trump has been signing Kim's praises and carrying on as if peace in our time has been achieved, North Korea's nukes have been disarmed and political prisoners released.

[Nick Danger]

This article debunks the claim that he was a great negotiator in business. http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/donald...t-of-the-deal/ It's been estimated that Trump's net worth is about half what it would have been if he'd simply put his money into a stock market index fund.

Let's consider his record as President:

Exhibit A: Repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump promised to negotiate a deal that would deliver better health insurance coverage at lower cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deal they tried to ram through Congress with Trump's support would have increased premiums and left 32 million people without insurance. Reports indicate that his own Congressional members were unimpressed with his negotiation efforts as he had done no preparation and basically had no idea what he was talking about.

Exhibit B: the North Korean 'deal'. Nothing has actually been agreed other than some vague objectives similar to those in previous agreements that failed to deliver those objectives. North Korea has not yet committed to anything concrete. Yet Trump has been signing Kim's praises and carrying on as if peace in our time has been achieved, North Korea's nukes have been disarmed and political prisoners released.

So you don't consider the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un to be an achievement? You don't think a deal will follow? There's no country on the planet that needs a deal with the USA more than North Korea, and there's no country that the USA will profit more by developing than North Korea. It's a win-win and it's going to happen.

It puzzles me when I see Stavros putting so much emphasis on the fact that the USA doesn't recognize North Korea as a sovereign nation. Well, how's that been working out for all parties involved? It's time to change the relationship to everyone's mutual benefit.

Also, let's be very frank about Obamacare - it is socialism. Not only is the USA not a socialist country, we recognize socialism as a natural enemy of capitalism. Could be that's a false dichotomy and there's room for both, that's above my pay-grade. Me, I'm not a family man or a healthcare voter, so I could go either way on the Obamacare issue.

I'm definitely not a person with no sympathy for poor people. But there are two kinds of poor people, the working poor, and the lazy poor. One perspective that I tend to adhere to is, everyone in the USA already has medical coverage in the form of Medicaid, which is a sub-adequate program but DOES provide healthcare to people who are unable to obtain insurance. It's not as if people have to die in the streets, they can go to a hospital, they will be treated, and Medicaid will foot the bill - if they've bothered to sign up for it. Do poor people deserve the same healthcare as me, or you - people who have worked hard and smart to get what we have? Define "deserve."

Like any other area of the economy, healthcare constantly advances because there's big money to be made in healthcare. That's the magic of capitalism. Socialize it and maybe it stagnates.

Trump is still trying to repeal the ACA. As I said, he has either kept, or is TRYING to keep every promise he made during his campaign. I feel he will eventually succeed, but it was such a hot-button issue during the election that the Republicans simply didn't put enough time or thought into their replacement plan before they went full-steam after Obamacare. It was indeed, as you say, a very shitty plan.

[filghy2]

So you don't consider the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un to be an achievement? You don't think a deal will follow? There's no country on the planet that needs a deal with the USA more than North Korea, and there's no country that the USA will profit more by developing than North Korea. It's a win-win and it's going to happen.

Also, let's be very frank about Obamacare - it is socialism. Not only is the USA not a socialist country, we recognize socialism as a natural enemy of capitalism. Could be that's a false dichotomy and there's room for both, that's above my pay-grade. Me, I'm not a family man or a healthcare voter, so I could go either way on the Obamacare issue.

At best, it's a first step, but all the hard steps are still to come. Maybe Kim does want to change, but his bottom line is going to be to survive as leader and not go the way of Saddam or Gaddafi. Having nukes is the best guarantee of his survival and he knows that it's the only reason he got this meeting.

How is Obamacare socialism when doctors and insurers are all still private? Every developed capitalist country has some system of universal health cover. I think it would actually be better to have a single payer system because most of the problems with Obamacare are actually the result of the complexities involved in trying to provide universal coverage through private insurers.

There is simple stat that shows that the US health system does not work well at all. The US spends twice much on health care as a share of GDP than any other developed country. Yet it's health outcomes (eg life expectancy) are actually worse than others. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/inte...mirror-mirror/

[Stavros]

You are my favorite idealist, Stavros. The fact that you don't see yourself that way is interesting.

Of course he's going to get rich(er) from being President. Open corruption is the flavor now. I challenge you to name a President who never used the office to his personal advantage, even if it was only to help his friends succeed, i.e., make money. You can't, because that's just not how it works.

It is possible to have ideals and be a realist: every time I cite very real policy decisions that are happening now and right under your nose, you either dismiss them or claim they are of little or marginal importance. But my point about the rights being taken away from Transgendered Americans, is that they are your rights too, just as the right to vote that is being taken away from voters in North Carolina or Ohio is also your voting right. It is frankly either bizarre or offensive that you seem so disinterested in the very rights that are the foundation on which the USA rests, and without which it would be 'just another' country, whereas Americans have built an exceptional country with all of its contradictions and successes. Voting rights are real, not an ideal. The decision to serve in the military is a real choice, not an ideal persuasion. Transgendered Americans are your equals, they cannot have rights taken away that you have and remain equal, by definition, this administration considers them to be Inferior citizens, but it begs the question: are they citizens? Just as Jasmine Jewels asks of some her fellow citizens: Are they real Americans? Without telling us what a 'real American' might be.

With regard to Presidents, the distinction is between making money after a President leaves office, or making money during it and from it. The only President I can think of who has made money from the office is currently sitting in it. Even Presidents who preceded the 50-year old rule on ethics did not profit from the Presidency -unless you cite who, how and when they did. I see no record of corruption in the Presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I and II, and Clinton. Ronald Reagan put all of his assets into a Blind Trust and had no idea how they were being managed. Obama did the same and published his tax returns, and the money he made was from two books published before he was elected President.

The reason why I discuss the technicality of North Korea and the USA is because it goes to the heart of the matter, which is not North Korea's nuclear status, but the status of the Korean Peninsula. Why was there such a savage war? Because the Worker's Party of Korea -then and now- laid claim to the whole of the peninsula as the legitimate government of the first unified Korea since the Japanese annexed the territory in 1910. The war was fought geographically between north and south, but in reality was fundamentally about the choice: capitalism or communism. If you trace the money spent in the Cold War, the two frontiers where the US spent most of its money were in Central Europe and East Asia, primarily Taiwan, Japan and Korea (South). And East Asia was critical because the USA faced off with China and Russia, North Korea being viewed then as a Chinese asset.

It was fundamental to US policy not to recognize North Korea as a separate state because the US and South Korea -and in fact, North Korea too- never accepted the legitimate separation of the peninsula, and the US always believed one Korea should be capitalist just as North Korea claimed the right to rule over the whole peninsula. Do the South Koreans want to sign a treaty that in practical terms confirms there are two Koreas and that unification is therefore impossible for a generation? What in fact would a peace treaty contain? Neither the US nor North Korea have said anything about it, in fact the document signed in Singapore, while it does merely mark the beginning of talks, says little that has not been agreed to before, so that while it was indeed remarkable for the Chairman of the Worker's Party to sit down with the President of the USA, only an idealist would welcome it as a major step forward. Realists search for, and hope for, the details.

[Nick Danger]

It is possible to have ideals and be a realist: every time I cite very real policy decisions that are happening now and right under your nose, you either dismiss them or claim they are of little or marginal importance. But my point about the rights being taken away from Transgendered Americans, is that they are your rights too, just as the right to vote that is being taken away from voters in North Carolina or Ohio is also your voting right. It is frankly either bizarre or offensive that you seem so disinterested in the very rights that are the foundation on which the USA rests, and without which it would be 'just another' country, whereas Americans have built an exceptional country with all of its contradictions and successes. Voting rights are real, not an ideal. The decision to serve in the military is a real choice, not an ideal persuasion. Transgendered Americans are your equals, they cannot have rights taken away that you have and remain equal, by definition, this administration considers them to be Inferior citizens, but it begs the question: are they citizens? Just as Jasmine Jewels asks of some her fellow citizens: Are they real Americans? Without telling us what a 'real American' might be.

With regard to Presidents, the distinction is between making money after a President leaves office, or making money during it and from it. The only President I can think of who has made money from the office is currently sitting in it. Even Presidents who preceded the 50-year old rule on ethics did not profit from the Presidency -unless you cite who, how and when they did. I see no record of corruption in the Presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I and II, and Clinton. Ronald Reagan put all of his assets into a Blind Trust and had no idea how they were being managed. Obama did the same and published his tax returns, and the money he made was from two books published before he was elected President.

The reason why I discuss the technicality of North Korea and the USA is because it goes to the heart of the matter, which is not North Korea's nuclear status, but the status of the Korean Peninsula. Why was there such a savage war? Because the Worker's Party of Korea -then and now- laid claim to the whole of the peninsula as the legitimate government of the first unified Korea since the Japanese annexed the territory in 1910. The war was fought geographically between north and south, but in reality was fundamentally about the choice: capitalism or communism. If you trace the money spent in the Cold War, the two frontiers where the US spent most of its money were in Central Europe and East Asia, primarily Taiwan, Japan and Korea (South). And East Asia was critical because the USA faced off with China and Russia, North Korea being viewed then as a Chinese asset.

It was fundamental to US policy not to recognize North Korea as a separate state because the US and South Korea -and in fact, North Korea too- never accepted the legitimate separation of the peninsula, and the US always believed one Korea should be capitalist just as North Korea claimed the right to rule over the whole peninsula. Do the South Koreans want to sign a treaty that in practical terms confirms there are two Koreas and that unification is therefore impossible for a generation? What in fact would a peace treaty contain? Neither the US nor North Korea have said anything about it, in fact the document signed in Singapore, while it does merely mark the beginning of talks, says little that has not been agreed to before, so that while it was indeed remarkable for the Chairman of the Worker's Party to sit down with the President of the USA, only an idealist would welcome it as a major step forward. Realists search for, and hope for, the details.

First of all, Stavros, no, it's not my rights we're talking about here. I have more rights than anyone, I'm an educated white male homeowner with an attorney. Trample on my rights and I own all your stuff.

But I certainly hope I haven't given the impression that I'm against transgender rights. Of course I'm not. In fact, I think my beloved t-girls should have extra rights, like, I dunno, the right to unlimited free coffee. No taxes. Complimentary ski lessons. Three votes apiece and an ice cream sundae with every purchase.

But the hard truth is that transgender rights are OBJECTIVELY not a black-and-white issue. There are a lot of peripheral issues to consider. This is a relatively new problem. Twenty years ago we wouldn't be having this conversation, because transgenders were considered fringe members of society. Now they're out in the open, and some things need to be hashed out.

Like the thing with the bathrooms. Consider a young Christian mother who takes her 3-year-old daughter to the bathroom and then has to answer the question, "Mommy, why was that lady peeing standing up?" Maybe she suddenly has to give the birds-and-bees talk a decade before she intended to. Were her rights just violated? Maybe they were. And that's enough of a reason to take a hard look at the bathroom issue. IMO, better bathrooms with private stalls would be the perfect solution, but that's expensive af. There are a lot of goddamn public restrooms in this country.

Or the military thing. Might it be detrimental to a young genetic girl in boot camp if she has to wake up next to a girl who has morning wood every day? Might she be intimidated? It could; and she might. And that's enough of a reason to raise the question of transgenders in the military.

The backlash is mostly from Christian women (a very powerful voting bloc), and a lot of it is about children. Men, we could give a fuck. "That guy's got a pussy instead of a dick? Hope he can fucking keep up!"

But you see, Stavros, it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Of course transgenders are people just like anyone else. But they're people who are presenting society with an entirely new set of problems, and they're just going to have to let the political process work it out. Eventually the transgender rights issue will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. But not today, these things take time. It bothers me that you're so intelligent but you can't seem to understand something that simple.

Speaking of which, where are you from, Stavros? I'm guessing from the fact I've seen you use "Mate" before that it's Australia. But you're definitely not from here, or you'd know how executive appointments work. All those Presidents you mentioned spent the first several weeks of their administration sitting around deciding who is going to be Secretary of the Interior; who is going to be Secretary of State; who is going to be ambassador to Israel; who is going to be the White House Press Secretary? And on and on. How many people do you think the President of the United States appoints to high-ranking positions, Stavros? I seriously would like you to take a guess before you scan ahead for the answer........................................appr oximately 4,000.

All of these jobs are very lucrative for the people who get them so guess what? Now each of those people owes the President a favor. Favors equal money. Once a man is done with the Presidency, it's time to call in those favors. That's open corruption, and every single President you rattled off there is guilty as fuck.

Not to mention that there's so much maneuvering going on behind closed doors, there's no way you can say with any assurance whatsoever that none of those people are guilty of taking outright bribes while in office. I'll tell you one thing, some of the decisions they make certainly make it seem like they must have been given some reason besides common sense to make them. And the consensus opinion of us Americans is, yeah, most likely all of our high-ranking political leaders are corrupt. It's basically just understood. If you lived here, you'd know that. So whatever Trump is doing is nothing new. If it's legal, I'm sorry, but I don't have much of a problem with it, and most Americans without the visceral-anti-Trump gene would say the same. I never expected Trump to hang up his calculator when he took office.

As for North Korea, it seems to me that South Korea stands to benefit quite a lot from a peaceful transition into recognizing North Korea and doing business with them. Whatever reason there may have been to blacklist North Korea, things have changed in the last 70 years. Obviously North Korea is going to continue to occupy that part of the peninsula, they're going to continue to be a communist nation, there's no open warfare happening that might push them off the peninsula or overthrown their government. So time to move on. The people who made all these decisions are...long dead. Donald Trump knows an opportunity when he sees one.

[filghy2]

This isn't baseball, it is organized crime.

Actually, it's a combination of gangster capitalism, personality cult and white christian nationalism. It's the other two things that make the gangster capitalism possible.

[Nick Danger]

There is simple stat that shows that the US health system does not work well at all. The US spends twice much on health care as a share of GDP than any other developed country. Yet it's health outcomes (eg life expectancy) are actually worse than others. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/inte...mirror-mirror/

I'm going to have to disagree with your reasoning there, Flighty. What I said was, capitalism leads to advances in healthcare, whereas if healthcare is socialized, these advances could stagnate. Or something like that.

I was able to find some graphy things from like a decade or so ago. The numbers haven't changed much in the last 10 years, and I know you like graphy things, so here goes:

Exhibit A: a graphy thing showing that the USA publishes more biomedical research than any other country in the world - in fact we publish 40% of ALL the biomedical research in the world -



Exhibit B: another graphy thing showing that we not only publish more biomedical research, by far, than any other country, but that additionally, our research is cited more often, proportionally, than any other country's, meaning it is higher-quality and more sought-after research than the other guys...again, by far -



Now I never said our healthcare system was the finest in the world. Fact is, it's pretty damn good if you're rich, pretty damn mediocre if you're middle class, and pretty damn shitty if you're poor.

But because of the magic of capitalism, we are the driving force behind advancing healthcare on this planet. And that fact is something to consider when you're deciding whether or not to change the way we do things here.

Just saying.

[filghy2]

Exhibit A: a graphy thing showing that the USA publishes more biomedical research than any other country in the world - in fact we publish 40% of ALL the biomedical research in the world.

That's a completely different issue. How exactly does the government helping people to get health insurance lead to less medical research? Does it occur to you that the benefits of research depend on how many people can afford to pay for the treatments?

You also seem to have missed something in your googling. The US research lead has been slipping since well before Obamacare, partly because your friends in Congress have been cutting federal research funding. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...nations-rev-up

[Nick Danger]

That's a completely different issue. How exactly does the government helping people to get health insurance lead to less medical research? Does it occur to you that the benefits of research depend on how many people can afford to pay for the treatments?

You also seem to have missed something in your googling. The US research lead has been slipping since well before Obamacare, partly because your friends in Congress have been cutting federal research funding. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...nations-rev-up

You're missing the point, Flighty. I'm not trying to insult you, I know you know some stuff. But do you fully understand how a ginormous health insurance company like Blue Cross/Blue Shield does business? By insuring so many people, they get a substantial discount when they pay YOUR bill. You racked up a $20,000 hospital bill after an accident. You're covered by BC/BS. So great, you're in the clear. But BC/BS is most definitely NOT going to be paying that hospital $20,000. Every kind of treatment is different, and actual representative-to-representative negotiations happen on extremely large bills. But on average, figure Blue Cross is getting about a 30% discount on people's medical bills across-the-board.

But fine, healthcare is overpriced, fair enough, everybody still made some money.

But what about Medicaid? There's a very good reason a person on Medicaid has to go to the shittiest hospital in town - Medicaid gets more like a 90% discount when they pay a provider, because they are a government program. The provider is lucky to break even, and that's why so many providers refuse to accept Medicaid patients. There's always a hospital around that will, but usually it is a government-subsidized hospital with poor people lined up around the block to get treated by doctors in the middle of 18-hour shifts.

Now, all cards on the table, I have not read the Affordable Care Act. I don't know what it provides, I don't know what it mandates, I don't know a damn thing about it. I have private health insurance even though I haven't been to a doctor in decades. I voted for Obama, he seemed to think the ACA was a good idea, I like the guy and I'm pretty sure he's smarter than me, so I wasn't one of those people hollering "Socialism" and trying to get it stopped.

But I do know this - as soon as the government starts mandating insurance coverage for poor people, the discounts get heavy. This means less money going INTO the healthcare economy, and therefore less research being done.

Why do you think Big Pharma et al are working so hard looking for cures for this and that cancer, AIDS, the common cold, you name it? Because if they find it, it's huge money. And I'm not saying Obamacare means they can't still make big money off that kind of research. But less money. Because the honey-pot is smaller.

You take a country like Canada, with its socialized medicine, and what are they doing to cure cancer? Not jack-shit, because they don't have the money in the healthcare economy to pursue that kind of research in earnest. Google "Canadian Medical Breakthroughs" and the first thing that comes up is an article called "Eight Medical Breakthroughs Canadians Should Be Proud Of." Eight. And one of those is fucking childproof bottles. As always, they are riding on the coattails of big brother USA, and meanwhile strutting around like the cock of the walk because their citizens don't have to pay to go to the doctor.

It ain't brain surgery, Flighty, except sometimes of course. It's just simple math. Private, capitalist healthcare is the key to advancing medicine. We're bearing the burden for the smiling socialized-medicine countries of the world. If you have a 3-digit IQ, and I know you do, you certainly don't have to use much of it to figure whose back the rest of the world is riding on.

[filghy2]

It ain't brain surgery, Flighty, except sometimes of course. It's just simple math. Private, capitalist healthcare is the key to advancing medicine. We're bearing the burden for the smiling socialized-medicine countries of the world. If you have a 3-digit IQ, and I know you do, you certainly don't have to use much of it to figure whose back the rest of the world is riding on.

Okay, let's do some simple math. You are arguing that it is worth paying more for health care because it funds more medical research. The US spends 16.6% of its GDP on health care. Canada spends 9.9% of GDP, which is about average for the other developed countries. The difference amounts to about $4,000 extra per year for every American, or about $320,000 over their lifetime.

Do you think the average American is likely to get $320,000 worth of benefits from additional medical research? As I said, they can only get these benefits if they can afford the new treatments and without Obamacare there would be 32 million more people without insurance.