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

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.

My lol was an xp btw

i don't have any problem with the mitt romney communist health care that my family enjoys. it has paid for so much stuff. major surgery. all kinds of things. more states should do that. trump can't take it away either i don't think.

Good on john scalzi

I'm not comforted in the slightest, but Trump trying to play the uniter is somewhat comic.

longneck - i'm really sorry. there's never a good time for that news, but to have it happen this week. oof. :-/

re: clinton being a bad candidate

there was a really obvious problem, occasionally stated but apparently ignored by her team: she never gave anyone a reason to vote for her. what would be different about a clinton presidency, what would people have to look forward to? she did have a few initiatives she could have talked about, even if they weren't exactly the most inspiring, like addressing student loan debt. maybe she thought that since the GOP would block everything single thing she wanted to do, it wasn't worth highlighting. and of course, i realize that it's tough to talk about a brand new inspirational vision when you're following 8 years of obama, 4 of which you served in as a cabinet member. but regardless, in the end she effectively stood for nothing, offered nothing to vote for. she could have let her surrogates and the rest of the entire fucking world tear Trump down while offering her alternate future, but since she had nothing else to offer, she joined in as well.

yeah, clinton came off as weirdly vague about things. even her sloganeering was in no way memorable.

"she never gave anyone a reason to vote for her. what would be different about a clinton presidency, what would people have to look forward to?"

it's because trump was so fucking awful and rising in the polls she wasted all her time tearing him down; look at the debates, they were 90% about Trump and Trump's views. She never got around to making a case for herself.

like if you asked people what her goals were and what she wanted to do most people would have trouble remembering. i realize that doesn't say much when people don't even know who the vice president is in this country but still....

"even her sloganeering was in no way memorable"

you mean you didn't like "Chillary" beer cozies???

but it really is the complete opposite of trump. everyone remembers what he said he was gonna do. wall. deport. more jobs. etc.

what would be different about a clinton presidency

Why should anything be different? Obama has been a great president, is broadly popular, and the economy has pulled back from total collapse. "Four more years of this, basically" is a good reason to vote for somebody.

yeah, sadly, i'd settle for status quo hillary. obviously.

she was clearly gonna bomb even more

but then the angry people would have just been four years more angry. i don't know. i don't know how to make Indiana a more robust state.

but eh, foreign kids and future terrorists, fuck em xp

"everyone remembers what he said he was gonna do"

and in that period where Hil just repeated every word Bernie said, all of her words sounded like lies including "and" and "the'

anyway KM otm

"Four more years of this, basically" is probably a better slogan than "I'm with her", tbh.

One of many reasons I hope protests continue, at least to some degree, is that Trump is above all else a man who defines himself by his success, and president or not, he's still a private businessman. I can't imagine his properties will seem that appealing with hundreds, or even dozens, of angry protesters out front, or even the threat of same. This might be the first president in eons, if ever, who is *financially* vulnerable if not politically. He may or may not give a shit if people are upset, but he'd sure care if his fortunes started faltering.