Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

hoping for perpetual outrage and resistance to normalcy.

You were alive from 2000-2008. You know that's not happening. This will blow over by Thanksgiving, bubble up again a little at inauguration, and then disappear almost entirely next year. It'll disappear completely as far as the media are concerned; they will long since have normalized him and become court stenographers. Assuming this administration even engages with the press at all - the campaign/transition team is basically totally shutting out their press pool reporter already. I wouldn't be surprised if the White House briefing room was turned into a room for Trump's homunculus of a son to play video games in.

Don't underestimate his vanity. Iraq beats ISIS in Mosul, and its a Trump victory. Cosmetic changes to the ACA, and its Trumpcare.

Really, my glimmer of hope resolves around his self interest. If Trump backs out of the Paris Accord, I want every country around the world to boycott Trump properties, for legal action against his hotels and golf courses everywhere. Let his children know that his decisions are destroying their own prospects.

do people think that that jonathan pie guy is a real news person? why do people post those videos on facebook? i'm convinced people think he is real.

A friend of mine whose thoughts I value on most matters wrote this about health care and trade
"The problem is the drugs. We invent them at tremendous cost but nations like the UK, Canada, etc force us to sell them to them dirt cheap, which raises the cost to our citizens. TPP was going to make it more equitable by allowing governments to offset the cost directly and forcing them to abide by the agreement.
Basically everyone wants our innovations without having to pay. America subsidizes the luxury of cheap healthcare abroad. The cost falls back unfairly on us."

Its all about climate for me too. Dont wanna have to tell my kids in 20 years that they have no future thanks to an fbi director and an email server. The idea that Trump's massive conflicts of interest might hsave us all is.....amusing

The world’s 25 biggest drug and biotech companies hail from 8 countries, with 15 based in the U.S., 2 each headquartered in the U.K., Switzerland and Germany and 1 in Denmark, France, Israel and Japan.

How do all of the non-American companies manage?
xp

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/12/donald-trump-appears-to-soften-stance-on-range-of-pledges

already 'softening' on Obamacare and such.

Yeah Sanders, that's not only not true, that's kinda insulting to every medical researcher outside the us, including my brother who does foundational research at a public university, funded by taxpayer money from people like me.

Dean Baker worth reading:
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/surviving-the-age-of-trump

I wasn't agreeing with what he said, I was posting it here to see what you guys thought? I usually like what he post about things not because I agree with him but I like other's opinions.

I think he's wrong, and I got kinda angry about it because it hits close to home :)

But really, from over here, American pharmaceuticals are insane. Martin Skhreli, OxyContin, that blood-test scam that I can't figure out how to google right now.

How do all of the non-American companies manage?

Besides, if American drug companies, and by extension American consumers, are in fact being exploited by all these predatory foreign countries with socialized health care programmes, or more heavily regulated drug prices, it seems like it would be an easy problem for the US government to fix. Do you really think Canada could get away with exploitative trading practices against the US? For starters, as my earlier link about NAFTA shows, American corporations have had plenty of success with just flat out suing the Canadian government over legislation that gets in their way.

But, yes, as Frederik points out, a lot of research and innovation, even within the US, is done with public funding at research institutions. In the day and age of Martin Shkreli, it should not be hard to see that the corporations who charge astronomical prices for drugs are i) not always responsible for the innovation and ii) willing to charge whatever the market will bear.

xp

just skimming the last 12+ hours of posts, have mostly been writing up stuff for my blog, but a couple things that jumped out at me:

"For such an extreme radical who looks down his nose at ppl who take electoral politics seriously dr morbius has some depressingly typical "moderate" views"

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40)

man, you know how much it pisses me off that my bernie or bust/jill stein voter uncle who i had to ignore because he was so strident is now talking about "healing"? it takes some special skill to be wrong so consistently.

"Have been teetering on the brink of total despair all day, because I think this willful ignorance is probably unfixable."

― Josh in Chicago

for what it's worth, i agree that the ignorance is unfixable, but i don't see it as cause for despair. i think the best thing for us to do is to recalibrate our assumptions and find new and different ways of compensating for willful ignorance.

"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/12/donald-trump-appears-to-soften-stance-on-range-of-pledges

already 'softening' on Obamacare and such."

― piscesx

my wife's response to that: "he's not 'softening', he just parrots back whatever the last person he talked to told him.

Personally, I think we need to start thinking about healthcare expenditures competing with investments in our future. We can't spend 18% of GDP on healthcare without severe costs to other parts of the economy. Most of this spending is palliative care for chronic, self-inflicted diseases, where the cures are in lifestyle/diet, not medicine. We need to stop believing that drugs and procedures are more effective than they actually are. Many who wouldn't elect for them, if they were informed of the true costs, side-effects and limited benefits. Chemo increases survival rates 2%. Interventional cardiology (from stents to bypasses) reduces angina, less well than diet, and doesn't change outcomes.

There's been a shortage of drug candidates for two decades. The low-hanging fruit among small molecule drug candidates has been found. Patent drug companies have few options. They spend money on marketing, significantly more than on research. They shop the market of biotechs startups for candidates. They do their trials in lower cost developing nations. But basic research won't end if institutional buyers (from Medicare to insurance cos" subject drugs to cost/benefit analysis. And if institutional buyers don't, who will?

If we want more medical breakthroughs, I'd spend more research grants on preventative medicine, and lower the regulatory burden for drug discovery for rare diseases. But I wouldn't reward the marketing firms that happen to sell patent drugs beyond what their products are worth.

In that earlier Times piece the Trump camp indicated, among other things, that he was interested in continuing to hold rallies. That does not bode well. What does bode well is every early indication that he will literally be unable to govern, due to his short attention span and rampant self-interest and regard. What are the odds that he won't distract himself micromanaging his family and/or fortune? What are the odds, that if a day or two of protests months before he's inaugurated gets under his skin, similar or larger protests down the line don't derail him? What are the odds that when or if he attempts to enact policies that will detrimentally affect tens of millions of people in America it will bring the GOP cold war - or something broader and more acute - to a head? Is he the type of guy to call in the national guard to get his way? He's long seemed to lack the courage of his convictions, whatever they may be, choosing the coward's route of legal harassment to conflict. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, still finding ways to cope, but hearing of a Trump hopeful to retain his rich homebody lifestyle in Trump Tower gives me some comfort. Bush could go clear brush in Texas. Who goes to the heart of Manhattan for peace and quiet? And Trump out of DC might give a clearer indication of the motives of his minions and cohort.

xpost Rush, please remind us (me) of your blog url.

Also: let's predict how may Trump Year One threads are we going to have.

Isn't the one drawback with Trump not being up to the job now taht he's been lined up that the job will instead fall on Mike Pence who would be much worse and wouldn't have been in tbe running if he hadn't agreed to the VP role?

Dudes, you know how its already been acknowledged that Trump's opinion on something depends on who he's recently discussed it with?

He recently discussed 'ObamaCare' with Barack Obama.

If that's all it takes, maybe the solution for the next four years is for Bill C to start playing golf with Trump again?

Might well be.

After my kid brother began complaining about all the barriers to effective medical research, I do get that it's more complex than just forcing the drug companies to charge lower prices - though I still think he's wrong on some details, I'm not going to artmajor-splain to him about his chosen field of study. I also remember this one RadioLab about a new wonder drug that was the first time you could cure this one disease, and it was massively expensive, tens of thousands of dollars for a few months of pills. But then you were cured. And you wouldn't need drugs for all the symptoms of the disease for decades, as you used to, and it the long run it would prove quite beneficial, not just for the lifes of the sick, but for the bottom line of the health care system as well. But in the short run, it could almost bankrupt some health care systems.

Can't there be a balance between government regulation of health care and free market solutions? I don't want health care for myself. I'd rather have a savings account for when I need it. I hate paying money for something I never use.

Can't there be a balance between government regulation of health care and free market solutions?

Yes. It's called the Affordable Care Act.

If that's all it takes, maybe the solution for the next four years is for Bill C to start playing golf with Trump again?

― Spiritual Hat Minimalism (Sund4r)

shit, no wonder eisenhower was such an effective president.

i think the exec branch is likely to work the way it did in the reagan years, when the president wanted to be head of state and in front of the tube by seven: a fractious coalition of dead-eyed d.c. republican psychos and wild-eyed breitbart psychos, backstabbing each other and competing to manipulate trump while enduring high turnover. (the difference being that the nihilistic zealot team in reagan's administration is the mainstream adult one in trump's.) meanwhile trump will go on tv and hold rallies and whip up public opinion against anyone who opposes the expansion of his power and perform the role of crisis president while plundering whatever he can plunder for his family.

xpost Rush, please remind us (me) of your blog url.

― Josh in Chicago

thank you so much for asking! now i can post it again without feeling like an asshole shill. :)

http://rebuildingeverything.blogspot.com/

i just posted a bunch more stuff there. the logorrhea continues unabated. if anything starting a blog has only increased it.

What happens to the crazy conspiracy theory right now they their guys are in the White House?

this is going to be the most leak-prone administration in history

What happens to the crazy conspiracy theory right now they their guys are in the White House?

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, November 12, 2016

this or that aide credited as "senior administration official" will leak conspiracies once a week

But who will they scapegoat? They can't blame a black guy or woman, they can't cry fraud or cover-up. Or can they?

But the ACA doesn't allow me to shop for my services, like I would bluejeans. If I need anything at a doctor's office, I have to go to someone within my network, I have to accept their prices which I won't even know until I get the bill. Why aren't companies, hospitals, drug companies forced to compete like other services? Now I can't use my own money to pay for what I think is best for myself.

ACA doesn't have cost control measures.

For cost control, there's no alternative to rationing some care. Death panels, in the GOP parlance.

JacobSanders do you love free market capitalism and think its potentials limitless if it were only 'truly' free...or are you just trying to deal with the current setup?

xp: The fact that we can't force health care providers and drug companies to publish and charge the same rates to all is one of the biggest failures of the health care market.

Literally the only reason I had high-deductable insurance for some years was to get the insurer price.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-aides-hedge-on-major-pledges-including-obamacare-and-the-wall/2016/11/11/9196b364-a82f-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html

So is there any single campaign promise his people have *not* hedged on? This litany pretty much covers ... everything. Which means that everything specific he promised he may not do, and everything people are truly hoping he does - jobs, etc. - never had any specifics to begin with. Welcome to the ad hoc presidency.

We can judge him from his concrete actions, starting with selection of Pence. Ignore the palaver.

They will scapegoat their enemies within the administration. They're already goi g at each other trying to divide up the spoils of victory. Trumps management style is to let his subordinates fight it out and fight they will.

I don't trust that they're going to hedge on all this any more than I trusted that the campaign promises would be kept. Much of this "hedging" talk could simply be a way of pacifying the opposition and protests until post-Inauguration Day.

Well, it's at least a tacit acknowledgement that his goals are, if even possible, very difficult to achieve.

The wall won't happen. Further militarisation of the border and roundups of "suspect" immigrants will happen, and people will say "at least he didn't build the wall".

Trump's campaign was based on an implicit promise that he would make minorities know who's really in control. He clearly has done that, people are terrified. So I'd suspect most of his voters think this is working out just fine.

If he doesn't start building a wall he can blame Dems for stopping him and when he runs again, assuming he does, he can make building the wall a campaign promise.

I doubt there will be a wall but the border patrol and ICE will get unlimited funding which is why they endorsed trump in the first place

"Did I say wall? I meant I was going to build a MALL! A great mall! A mall of America!"

at the bong store to buy gatorade - welcome to america - and i asked the owner what they were saying about trump in pakistan - he always has pakistan news on the radio - and he immediately started telling me how long he had been in the states and how his family went to school here and he hadn't been back to pakistan in 17 years.

and i told him that sounded fine and i wouldn't have him rounded up for deportation. okay, i didn't really. i didn't know what to say. i just wanted some insight into what people were saying in pakistan.

so, yeah, people are frightened. in case anyone still wasn't sure about that.

Lol

So hope hicks is going to be press secretary? Has she been on tv one fucking time during the election? This could be hilarious or excruciating.

John Barron should be press secretary.

If you have "non-racist" friends or family who voted for Trump, there's a handy analogy for them here:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/

Agreed re 'tacit acknowledgment' Josh.

I mean he had already started hedging on the wall before Election Day. I never put much stock in the wall per se, but read it as a shorthand for ramped up enforcement and deportations. The Trump voters I've seen interviewed pretty much read it that way as well.