I assumed he was talking out of his ass.
No, his is one of the few posts in this thread that ISN’T alarmist propaganda bullshit.
The only thing certain is that some things will not happen(such as minimum wage going up), and that the court will likely veer right, although that depends on who retires. Ginsburg and Breyer might hold out awhile longer, while Scalia and Kennedy might decide to retire under a Republican administration.
War in the Middle East? Let’s not be silly. Whether or not we go to war in the Middle East depends entirely on circumstances beyond anyone’s control. The Republican Party is not going to do anymore elective wars. If we go to war it’s because we’ve been attacked and allowing ISIS to have a de facto state has become intolerable and we can no longer count on our allies on the ground to get the job done. That could just as likely happen in the last year of Obama’s administration as the first year of a Rubio administration.
The interesting question is whether ACA will actually be repealed. At minimum, if it is, it will be grandfathered so that no one who currently has ACA insurance will lose theirs. That’s probably a safe political move, since most people won’t need or want ACA insurance anyway once they get jobs where they get health insurance. So the rolls will decline precipitously after repeal even if we guarantee everyone who has it can keep it.
That part where everybody gets a job that comes with health insurance? Maybe you could kinda fill in some of the details?
Pretty much everyone with exchange insurance will probably eventually get a job with health insurance, since almost all of those people are workers as it is. Those who aren’t working or are minimum wage workers are on Medicaid, and they can also be grandfathered, although they might be grandfathered for life.
Just like the US was dragged into the way in Iraq, kicking and screaming?
Why not? Both of the last two Republican presidents took the nation to war.
Most current stat is that only 57% of employers provide any health benefits to at least some of their employees: 2015 Employer Health Benefits Survey:
The first Gulf War wasn’t elective, at least not if we’ve learned a single thing from the last big war. When one country invades and absorbs another, the world has to respond.
Of course, if you’re saying that Democrats will keep us out of war by ignoring aggression, then that’s an interesting bit of information. Thank you for that.
Apart from Trump all the other Republican candidates have made clear they would tear up the agreement with Iran and go much tougher on them, potentially leading to war. Which would 100 percent be an elective war.
Amazingly enough Trump is the only sensible Republican on this. Well a broken clock is still right twice a day.
Aside from all the other points already made – most notably an even more severe right-turn in the Supreme Court which has already left a trail of legal carnage and the nullification of the tiny baby step that was made in improving access to health care – I find this bit of facile optimism hard to accept. Similar statements were made after the almost unfathomable tragedy of the Vietnam war, and what happened?
Well within the memory of a single generation, barely a couple of decades after Vietnam, Cheney and Rumsfeld and his pals at the Project for a New American Century were beating the war drums again, demanding that America set out to police the world and mold it in its own image, particularly the Middle East, and lamenting – quite literally, lamenting – the absence of a trigger event like Pearl Harbor that could galvanize public support for war. To Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of the PNAC ideologues the events of 9/11 were like the answer to a prayer. The Second Gulf War was much, much more than just “elective” – it was a perfect fit to a long-term strategy that had been in the making since the 90s, despite memories of Vietnam still being so fresh that the later additions to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial were still being completed.
they are full of shit if they all say that then. As long as the agreement is working well, it should be kept. If Iran so much as violates one small part of the treat though, then it should be abrogated and sanctions restored.
How that leads to war, I’m not sure.
And we’ve all learned from that mistake. Aside from GWB, Democrats have been throwing the “warmonger” accusation at Republicans ever since the end of WWII. It’s always been stupid. GWB excepted, REpublicans have arguably been MUCH better at keeping the US out of dumb wars, and fighting the wars we do fight much more intelligently.
Excuse me? it was Republican Eisenhower’s formation of SEATO and sending in of advisers and bombers that led to the inevitability of US involvement in the pointless Vietnam war.
That’s just a weird argument, since Ike didn’t make the decision to implement gradual escalation, didn’t micromanage a war, and didn’t support the overthrow of the only leader that had the stature to be a counter to Ho Chi Minh.
Then Nixon came along and fought the war a heck of a lot better than Johnson did.
It’s also worth pointing out that the Vietnam escalation under Johnson wasn’t the result of nefarious motives and malevolent planning of the kind that Cheney and Rumsfeld engaged in. It was more like a Shakespearean tragedy, a confluence of circumstances and character. Johnson in part was lied to by his advisers, and in part his advisers were misinformed and incompetent. It was a descent into hell step by tragic step, each decision that was supposed to be the decisive end to it all just sinking them deeper into the quagmire. McNamara regretted his role in it for the rest of his life.
Really quite different from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perelman, and the others having the whole thing neatly planned out and just itching for an excuse – any excuse – to start the bombs flying and the troops dying. It’s supremely naive to claim that “the lesson has been learned” when right up on the Republican debate stage are a bunch of hawks trying to outdo each other in how aggressive they sound and how enthusiastic they are about bombing all those nasty countries we don’t like.
It has more to do with the obvious necessity by then to end the damn thing no matter what, and Nixon did have a good handle on foreign policy, too, I grant you. But note also that during that time, most of the support for the war was from conservatives. It was Democrats who were fielding the peaceniks.
The SEATO treaty obligated the US to defend Vietnam, he was the one that signed it. His VP Nixon was one of the driving forces behind it.
Trump’s a proponent of UHC, isn’t he?
The elderly will keep their existing SocSec but younger Americans will, initially, be delighted when they’re invited to convert part of their SocSec into government-run (i.e. Wall St.-run) stock-buying schemes. There will be a sucking sound as the already-inflated stock market is driven higher by this rush of naive buying. Wall Street profits will soar, not only from commissions but because of their participation in the buying decisions, as orchestrated by the bought-and-for Congress and regulators.
As the stock market climbs and future retirees Buy High, the rich will Sell High and put the proceeds into hedge funds betting against the inflated market.
Sooner or later it will end very badly; the apology will be “Who could have known?” :rolleyes:
Privatization isn’t going to happen. We had control of everything and couldn’t get it done due to massive opposition. We’re not Democrats, we don’t keep on putting our hands in the fire.
No, we’ll handle entitlements the same way we did in 1982, probably with a combination of payroll tax increases(probably just raise the cap to $300K or so, the rate can’t really go any higher), benefit cuts, and a raise in the retirement age.
Medicare will be handled the same way all single payer systems are handled: we’ll just buy less health care. We’ll call it “provider cuts”, but provider cuts are benefit cuts. Thanks for giving us political cover on that, Democrats. We’ll put it to good use.
The GOP got their most recent Repeal Obamacare vote to Obama’s desk by using budget reconciliation to move it past the Senate. So if they keep the House and Senate, they’ll do the same thing, and then President Trump or Cruz will gleefully sign it (and probably burn a copy of Obamacare as symbolism on the White House lawn)
1,000 years of Darkness?
Or did that already start because Obama was Elected/Re-Elected?