Today marks Trumps 100th day in office, a benchmark that campaign Trump promised would be filled with glorious making America great again achievements but one that President Trump is complaining is an unfair and arbitrary marker dreamed up by the lying media to drag him down. Trump continues his habit of being the last person in the room to figure out a basic element of his job, like, it's hard. Who knew?
Trump may also be feeling down since he's finishing out his honeymoon period as literally the most unpopular president in history, but, if I were him, I wouldn't feel so bad about it; because for as bad as he's doing, the Democrats are doing even worse. The same ABC/Washington Post poll showed that only 52% of the Democratic base believes the party is in touch with the needs of common people. Again, that's not voters as a whole, that's the Democratic faithful saying their party is widely out of touch with their needs. The sad part of all this is it's not even a mystery as to why this is happening; for thirty years now the Democratic strategy has been to rail loudly against the social discrimination towards the poor and disaffected on the one hand while enacting economic policies that ensured they would stay poor and disaffected. It makes sense, in a way, if you ensure the downtrodden always exist, you'll have a reliable voting block. The idea that enacting popular, leftist polices that actually makes peoples lives better is a way easier path to getting votes is apparently a delusion best left to the college students before they can "grow up."
Watching the Democratic party through these first 100 days, the thing becomes glaringly obvious is that they really don't realize that they are a party in need of a serious revamp, instead they're doing everything they can to ignore that fact. You would think losing almost every state legislature, governorship, both houses of Congress, and the presidency over the last eight years, that self-reflection would be impossible to avoid, but these assholes have found a way. The final nail in the coffin should be the section of the ABC/Washington Post poll that showed that if the election were held again, today, Trump beats Clinton 43-40 because more Democrats than Republicans regret voting for their candidate and given the opportunity, Democrats would vote for someone else. Let that really sink in for a moment: After a 100 days of bumbling idiocy from the Trump Administration, the Democratic Party would still lose because their own base couldn't stomach voting for Hilary Clinton again. If there's a clearer sign out there that you've completely lost your base, let me know, because I can't think of anything.
And it's not like there isn't a viable way out of all this staring them right in the face. The popularity of Bernie Sanders isn't because of who he is, it's because he advocates for policies that are, surprise surprise, really popular with the American public. And sure, Tom Perez is currently doing a "Unity Tour" with Sanders to try to draw all his voters back into the Democratic fold, but this is somewhat undercut by the, surely spontaneous, hit pieces against Sanders in Slate, Salon, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. It sorta undercuts the DNC's message that they're willing to work with Sanders and listen to his voters when the usual Democratic media outlets suddenly start spewing out pieces about why no one should be listening to Sanders or his shitty little podcast.
This is especially stupid in the face of two special elections that, per traditional Democratic thinking, have no business being competitive. The special election in Kansas was determined by 8,000 votes, and the special election in Georgia is set for a run-off in June after the Democratic candidate received 48% of the vote. Getting nail-biter elections in deeply Republican states and districts should be enough for the DNC to go "Yeah, okay, this could work," but, I guess not. You can't expect the party ostensibly on the left side of spectrum to actually run leftists and progressives, that's just crazy talk.
Thankfully, if the people at the top won't get with the program, there's growing evidence that the voters themselves will throw them out to the garbage where they belong. Dianne Feinstein recently got hissed and booed at her town hall when she said she wouldn't support a Medicare-For-All single payer health program. It seems the Democratic voters are finally waking up to the fact that if they want the party to represent them, they actually have to force them to do it. Good thing too, because while it seems unlikely, eventually someone will emerge from the cesspool of ignorance that is the Republican party and figure out a way to get all of that horrific shit done. So, if we want to stop that from happening, we'll need to save ourselves, because no one else is really lining up to do so.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Fallout, Hopes and Wants
So I'm about 72 hours in on Fallout 4 and about 20 hours or so in to my second play-through on Fallout: New Vegas and doing a compare/contrast between the two has got me thinking about what I'd like to see from the the next Fallout game, be it a numbered sequel or a tie-in like New Vegas.
First, move the game back out West. The desolate beauty f the desert wasteland is a much better backdrop than the Northeast. For one thing, you don't have to do a lot of work to make the setting desolate because... it already is that way. With both 3 and 4 Bethesda had to do a lot of work in setting the stage with a lot of bombed out forests and the like, but, really, burnt up trees just don't quite pack the same apocalyptic punch as the basically unending ocean of sand with a relentless sun hanging overhead like the desert does. That, and when working with a barren landscape over a scarred one, the natural thematic curve of the story focuses around the player imposing their will on the Wasteland instead of trying to heal it, which is more in line with the series' emphasis on player choices anyway, so, that would be my hi-art reason if pushed to name another reason beyond aesthetics alone. So I'm hoping that the next game takes place in Arizona, the lower portion of California in the Mojave, or Wyoming, and as far as plot goes, I would want things to pick up pretty much where New Vegas left off.
My real, true hope is that the game takes place in Arizona, where a bolstered NCR is trying to claim all the lost territories of the a defeated Legion while trying to stamp out the remnants that are still scattered about the remaining territory. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to go with the NCR ending of New Vegas as the canon ending, so, the Brotherhood still exists under a shaky truce, the Khans left to Wyoming, and the NCR annexed New Vegas and much of the surrounding towns and communities. The reason why I want it to go this route is because it will offer players to a lot of opportunities to decide what the future of the area will be. Do they, for example, help the NCR in annexing and claiming even more territory and make the republic an empire? Or, does the player help all the wasteland tribes subjugated under the Legion reclaim their individual identities and try to govern themselves independently, or, along the same lines, does the player help them band together like the old Indian nations? Maybe, instead of all that, the player decides to rebuild the Legion, this time more in the mold of the military dictatorships of the Severan dynasty than the proto-imperial Cesarean legacy.
Point is, there's a shit ton of possibilities here with the chance to have multiple factions with lots of depth already there for the taking. I also think Bethesda should take Obsidian up on their desire to make a new Fallout game basically whenever because, honestly, doing that kind of world building and character depth is just not in Bethesda's wheelhouse. Better to give to people who've already proven they can deliver that kind of content and who also already know the lore of the universe that they're building off of.
As far as game play goes, there is actually a lot in 4 that I'd like to see kept in future installments. For one, actually creating the mods for your weapons and armor is so much better than just buying them from the store. Instead of jumping around to every place you can buy weapons from hoping that they'll randomly generate the thing you want/need, having crafting tables where you use materials you've gathered to create basically whatever the hell you want is really, the far superior option. Also I'd like to keep the option to raise the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats after your initial character creation, since it does create a much more flexible and fluid gaming experience to beef yourself up on things you may have been lacking in the first place. I will say though, I would like the leveling to go back to the 1-100 scale for each stat, since I don't really like not being able to increase my weapons damage until I've reached the appropriate level to scale it up; it's just an arbitrary ceiling imposed by the game to make sure you can't do too much too fast and it's more annoying than it is competitive.
What I'd also like to see re-tooled is the settlement mechanic. I actually think having the option to build up those communities is a great facet to add to the series and can greatly affect how people think about what they;re doing in game and how they go about shaping the world. But, it shouldn't be a mandatory thing. In my version of the next game, you'd have the choice to build up settlement spots into vibrant communities for whatever faction you choose, or, to basically use them as way stations and safe houses with AI that sees to their own needs. That way, if you want to invest the time and resources to get more out of them, you can, but if not, you can just have convenient places to stash your shit and sleep and just go on with whatever it is you want to do instead.
Oh, right, before I forget, re-add skill checks to the dialogue trees. Their absence in 4 made the dialogue feel constrained and much more limited than it had in previous installments, so, yeah, put that shit back in. It's not like there's a shortage of buttons on the controllers to assign the options to- you could put them on the triggers, for example- so please, Bethesda or whoever, get that back in there. Some of the best dialogue options have come from those skill checks, so don't sacrifice something that made your game what it is in the first place because you don't want to spend the time and money to have those lines recorded.
I always have high hopes for these games because it is my firm belief that the Fallout series is one of the main avenues we have in proving that gaming is as valid a storytelling medium as books or movies. And the glorious thing about the internet is that it gives the option to loudly, and incessantly, yell at the people who make the things we love to not fuck those things up. Plus, the better we demand games to be, the more fun we'll have playing them, so there's that too, which, I guess, is the more important thing in the end.
First, move the game back out West. The desolate beauty f the desert wasteland is a much better backdrop than the Northeast. For one thing, you don't have to do a lot of work to make the setting desolate because... it already is that way. With both 3 and 4 Bethesda had to do a lot of work in setting the stage with a lot of bombed out forests and the like, but, really, burnt up trees just don't quite pack the same apocalyptic punch as the basically unending ocean of sand with a relentless sun hanging overhead like the desert does. That, and when working with a barren landscape over a scarred one, the natural thematic curve of the story focuses around the player imposing their will on the Wasteland instead of trying to heal it, which is more in line with the series' emphasis on player choices anyway, so, that would be my hi-art reason if pushed to name another reason beyond aesthetics alone. So I'm hoping that the next game takes place in Arizona, the lower portion of California in the Mojave, or Wyoming, and as far as plot goes, I would want things to pick up pretty much where New Vegas left off.
My real, true hope is that the game takes place in Arizona, where a bolstered NCR is trying to claim all the lost territories of the a defeated Legion while trying to stamp out the remnants that are still scattered about the remaining territory. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to go with the NCR ending of New Vegas as the canon ending, so, the Brotherhood still exists under a shaky truce, the Khans left to Wyoming, and the NCR annexed New Vegas and much of the surrounding towns and communities. The reason why I want it to go this route is because it will offer players to a lot of opportunities to decide what the future of the area will be. Do they, for example, help the NCR in annexing and claiming even more territory and make the republic an empire? Or, does the player help all the wasteland tribes subjugated under the Legion reclaim their individual identities and try to govern themselves independently, or, along the same lines, does the player help them band together like the old Indian nations? Maybe, instead of all that, the player decides to rebuild the Legion, this time more in the mold of the military dictatorships of the Severan dynasty than the proto-imperial Cesarean legacy.
Point is, there's a shit ton of possibilities here with the chance to have multiple factions with lots of depth already there for the taking. I also think Bethesda should take Obsidian up on their desire to make a new Fallout game basically whenever because, honestly, doing that kind of world building and character depth is just not in Bethesda's wheelhouse. Better to give to people who've already proven they can deliver that kind of content and who also already know the lore of the universe that they're building off of.
As far as game play goes, there is actually a lot in 4 that I'd like to see kept in future installments. For one, actually creating the mods for your weapons and armor is so much better than just buying them from the store. Instead of jumping around to every place you can buy weapons from hoping that they'll randomly generate the thing you want/need, having crafting tables where you use materials you've gathered to create basically whatever the hell you want is really, the far superior option. Also I'd like to keep the option to raise the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats after your initial character creation, since it does create a much more flexible and fluid gaming experience to beef yourself up on things you may have been lacking in the first place. I will say though, I would like the leveling to go back to the 1-100 scale for each stat, since I don't really like not being able to increase my weapons damage until I've reached the appropriate level to scale it up; it's just an arbitrary ceiling imposed by the game to make sure you can't do too much too fast and it's more annoying than it is competitive.
What I'd also like to see re-tooled is the settlement mechanic. I actually think having the option to build up those communities is a great facet to add to the series and can greatly affect how people think about what they;re doing in game and how they go about shaping the world. But, it shouldn't be a mandatory thing. In my version of the next game, you'd have the choice to build up settlement spots into vibrant communities for whatever faction you choose, or, to basically use them as way stations and safe houses with AI that sees to their own needs. That way, if you want to invest the time and resources to get more out of them, you can, but if not, you can just have convenient places to stash your shit and sleep and just go on with whatever it is you want to do instead.
Oh, right, before I forget, re-add skill checks to the dialogue trees. Their absence in 4 made the dialogue feel constrained and much more limited than it had in previous installments, so, yeah, put that shit back in. It's not like there's a shortage of buttons on the controllers to assign the options to- you could put them on the triggers, for example- so please, Bethesda or whoever, get that back in there. Some of the best dialogue options have come from those skill checks, so don't sacrifice something that made your game what it is in the first place because you don't want to spend the time and money to have those lines recorded.
I always have high hopes for these games because it is my firm belief that the Fallout series is one of the main avenues we have in proving that gaming is as valid a storytelling medium as books or movies. And the glorious thing about the internet is that it gives the option to loudly, and incessantly, yell at the people who make the things we love to not fuck those things up. Plus, the better we demand games to be, the more fun we'll have playing them, so there's that too, which, I guess, is the more important thing in the end.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Front Row Seats at the Shit Show
If there's one good thing about life in 2017, is that there is no shortage of unbelievably stupid things to hang your head in shame at. So, with that, let's dive right in:
After spending a significant chunk of his campaign railing against American interventionism, Donald Trump is making noises to launch himself into not one but two wars. There's Syria where the chemical weapons attacks have apparently galvanized him into seeking the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power. The horrors of that attack aren't enough to let Syrians in as as refugees, but it does call him to launch ineffective bombing raids which, to no one's surprise, end up killing more children he's so broken up about but hey, it's the thought that counts. That Trump previously warned about the perils of getting involved in Syria means he was actually right about something but has now changed his mind due to the Washington thinkers he won the election disparaging is just too goddamned depressing to call ironic.
And then there's North Korea. Why exactly Trump feels compelled to antagonize the nuclear cyst that is North Korea is too stupefying for me to want to dive into, so we'll just focus on practical consequences. Now we have stories saying the administration is looking into shooting down test missiles launched by the DPRK; that their last showpiece missile launch was an abysmal failure would make you think that shooting them down is somewhat redundant but what do we know?
The upshot of both things is that Trump is playing fast and loose with stakes he doesn't realize. Because let's say that he does go all-in for a ground war in Syria, what then? Do we start shooting down Russian planes? Because nothing from the Kremlin has signaled that they'd drop their support for Assad in the face of a U.S. invasion so the question quickly becomes how, exactly, are you going to remove Assad from power without antagonizing their biggest ally? The same goes for North Korea, how do you really expect to start an armed conflict with that tin-foil dictatorship that doesn't involve China?
The most infuriating thing about all of this though is the response of the press. Ever since Trump's strike against the Syrian airbase and his MOAB drop in Afghanistan and his belligerence against North Korea, op-ed pages have been tripping over themselves praising Trump for being "Presidential." I wish I could shake every last one of them and scream "The fuck are you thinking!" right in their idiot faces. These are the exact same people who, say, a year from now, will be asking "How did this happen?" as we're looking down the barrel of one, maybe two, hopeless wars and how they could've possibly not seen them coming. Gee, I don't know media, maybe your glowing adoration and respect for a President who desperately craves both of those things could possibly, theoretically, encourage said President to escalate those conflicts to bask in your war-time patriot boners. It's just a thought, though. But really, Trump is on the verge of antagonizing and starting a war with not one but three nuclear powers and instead of recoiling in abject terror, the press is cheerleading him into it. This is one of those things that make me think that we deserve to be ashes on the cinder.
Of course, Trump probably wouldn't feel the need to prove himself with bombings abroad if he could actually accomplish things at home. Granted, that's giving him a lot of benefit of the doubt he doesn't really deserve, but it'd be folly to ignore his about-face towards American adventurism in the face of all the failures he's racking up on the domestic front. Sure, his Supreme Court pick went through after the Senate changed the rules of debate, but, other than that, he's got shit to show for his first 100-days in office. The wall that was supposed to start building on Day One as yet to materialize even as a spending bill, his tax cuts are also a no-show and then there's the whole "Repeal Obamacare!" thing that went down in such glorious flames. The dude's aching for a win here, and there really isn't any substitute for blowing shit up thousands of miles away to make people forget about your incompetence at home.
And, honestly, the whole 100 days thing isn't really a thing. It's a psychological trap that governments have locked themselves into ever since FDR. At the same time, this is one of those "It's real if your mind says it's real" type of things, so we have to play off of it. The whole thinking behind the 100 days thing is that this the time for the President to build up a solid win to springboard his other policies off of once the new car smell wears off. That Trump has proved incapable of doing so is going to lead to bigger problems down the road and the healthcare debacle provides a useful road map to his other major policy initiatives.
All of his future proposals, from the the wall to the tax cuts, involve massive amounts of deficit spending that the Freedom Caucus simply will not swallow. So to appease them, Trump is going to have to make certain budget concessions to cut funding elsewhere that will make the more moderate Republicans in both houses of Congress balk, because the only programs with the kind of money to trim to match Trump's deficit increasing tax cuts, for example, would be Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, aka the most popular government programs in history. There is no way in hell Republicans in vulnerable districts will put themselves so clearly on the wrong side of something for a man literally no one except Republican voters approve of. And since Trump doesn't have the personal clot or political capital to move the Freedom Caucus away from their positions, he'll be just as deadlocked as Obama was.
This dynamic is the reason why Trump named the Freedom Caucus as an enemy to be defeated in the 2018 midterms, but considering that these people come from die-hard conservative districts, it is highly doubtful that those voters would be willing to kick them out for adhering to "true conservative principles" in favor of Trump bag-men in a primary. Trump's cult of personality will protect him personally from the fallout of his failures, I'm sure, but I highly doubt it will galvanize voters to kick out people who are doing exactly what they were sent to Washington to do. Should be fun to watch, all the same.
In lighter news, Alex Jones is trying to pass off as a performance artist so he can convince the court that he is not, in fact, a complete lunatic so he can have custody of his children. This is yet another in a time honored tradition of right wing fuckwads building an audience by being uncompromising and meaning every word they say until suddenly, they don't mean anything at all, everything they do is all a sham. It never surprises me that these brave men of dignity and courage dump everything they've done at the first real sign of trouble, but I will admit to being shocked that there are so many people waiting to be duped by whatever shit-stain comes up to replace them and start the cycle all over again. Then again, there will always be a niche for people willing to tell millions of people that they're right to be ignorant assholes, so, there ya go.
I think that about does it for me this time, so, carry on, and try not get singed
After spending a significant chunk of his campaign railing against American interventionism, Donald Trump is making noises to launch himself into not one but two wars. There's Syria where the chemical weapons attacks have apparently galvanized him into seeking the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power. The horrors of that attack aren't enough to let Syrians in as as refugees, but it does call him to launch ineffective bombing raids which, to no one's surprise, end up killing more children he's so broken up about but hey, it's the thought that counts. That Trump previously warned about the perils of getting involved in Syria means he was actually right about something but has now changed his mind due to the Washington thinkers he won the election disparaging is just too goddamned depressing to call ironic.
And then there's North Korea. Why exactly Trump feels compelled to antagonize the nuclear cyst that is North Korea is too stupefying for me to want to dive into, so we'll just focus on practical consequences. Now we have stories saying the administration is looking into shooting down test missiles launched by the DPRK; that their last showpiece missile launch was an abysmal failure would make you think that shooting them down is somewhat redundant but what do we know?
The upshot of both things is that Trump is playing fast and loose with stakes he doesn't realize. Because let's say that he does go all-in for a ground war in Syria, what then? Do we start shooting down Russian planes? Because nothing from the Kremlin has signaled that they'd drop their support for Assad in the face of a U.S. invasion so the question quickly becomes how, exactly, are you going to remove Assad from power without antagonizing their biggest ally? The same goes for North Korea, how do you really expect to start an armed conflict with that tin-foil dictatorship that doesn't involve China?
The most infuriating thing about all of this though is the response of the press. Ever since Trump's strike against the Syrian airbase and his MOAB drop in Afghanistan and his belligerence against North Korea, op-ed pages have been tripping over themselves praising Trump for being "Presidential." I wish I could shake every last one of them and scream "The fuck are you thinking!" right in their idiot faces. These are the exact same people who, say, a year from now, will be asking "How did this happen?" as we're looking down the barrel of one, maybe two, hopeless wars and how they could've possibly not seen them coming. Gee, I don't know media, maybe your glowing adoration and respect for a President who desperately craves both of those things could possibly, theoretically, encourage said President to escalate those conflicts to bask in your war-time patriot boners. It's just a thought, though. But really, Trump is on the verge of antagonizing and starting a war with not one but three nuclear powers and instead of recoiling in abject terror, the press is cheerleading him into it. This is one of those things that make me think that we deserve to be ashes on the cinder.
Of course, Trump probably wouldn't feel the need to prove himself with bombings abroad if he could actually accomplish things at home. Granted, that's giving him a lot of benefit of the doubt he doesn't really deserve, but it'd be folly to ignore his about-face towards American adventurism in the face of all the failures he's racking up on the domestic front. Sure, his Supreme Court pick went through after the Senate changed the rules of debate, but, other than that, he's got shit to show for his first 100-days in office. The wall that was supposed to start building on Day One as yet to materialize even as a spending bill, his tax cuts are also a no-show and then there's the whole "Repeal Obamacare!" thing that went down in such glorious flames. The dude's aching for a win here, and there really isn't any substitute for blowing shit up thousands of miles away to make people forget about your incompetence at home.
And, honestly, the whole 100 days thing isn't really a thing. It's a psychological trap that governments have locked themselves into ever since FDR. At the same time, this is one of those "It's real if your mind says it's real" type of things, so we have to play off of it. The whole thinking behind the 100 days thing is that this the time for the President to build up a solid win to springboard his other policies off of once the new car smell wears off. That Trump has proved incapable of doing so is going to lead to bigger problems down the road and the healthcare debacle provides a useful road map to his other major policy initiatives.
All of his future proposals, from the the wall to the tax cuts, involve massive amounts of deficit spending that the Freedom Caucus simply will not swallow. So to appease them, Trump is going to have to make certain budget concessions to cut funding elsewhere that will make the more moderate Republicans in both houses of Congress balk, because the only programs with the kind of money to trim to match Trump's deficit increasing tax cuts, for example, would be Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, aka the most popular government programs in history. There is no way in hell Republicans in vulnerable districts will put themselves so clearly on the wrong side of something for a man literally no one except Republican voters approve of. And since Trump doesn't have the personal clot or political capital to move the Freedom Caucus away from their positions, he'll be just as deadlocked as Obama was.
This dynamic is the reason why Trump named the Freedom Caucus as an enemy to be defeated in the 2018 midterms, but considering that these people come from die-hard conservative districts, it is highly doubtful that those voters would be willing to kick them out for adhering to "true conservative principles" in favor of Trump bag-men in a primary. Trump's cult of personality will protect him personally from the fallout of his failures, I'm sure, but I highly doubt it will galvanize voters to kick out people who are doing exactly what they were sent to Washington to do. Should be fun to watch, all the same.
In lighter news, Alex Jones is trying to pass off as a performance artist so he can convince the court that he is not, in fact, a complete lunatic so he can have custody of his children. This is yet another in a time honored tradition of right wing fuckwads building an audience by being uncompromising and meaning every word they say until suddenly, they don't mean anything at all, everything they do is all a sham. It never surprises me that these brave men of dignity and courage dump everything they've done at the first real sign of trouble, but I will admit to being shocked that there are so many people waiting to be duped by whatever shit-stain comes up to replace them and start the cycle all over again. Then again, there will always be a niche for people willing to tell millions of people that they're right to be ignorant assholes, so, there ya go.
I think that about does it for me this time, so, carry on, and try not get singed
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
That Didn't Last Very Long
Last Monday, Republicans revealed their long-talked about plan to replace Obamacare. By this Wednesday, the end-all-be-all plan has gone back to the drawing board to try and stave off the complete collapse of its support in the Republican party. It's almost like they just cobbled the thing together in the last few weeks instead of spending any of the almost seven years they've been railing about it to come up with an alternative. That's the kind of attitude and strategy you can trust in a government.
Much like the first Muslim ban, the scale and intensity of push back against the plan seems to have caught everyone completely off-guard; which, in context, is even worse this time around because the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote a report estimating that 26 million people would lose their coverage under the plan, which is two million more than the coffin-nail estimate the CBO did. So, armed with that knowledge, the best they could do was have Sean Spicer point at two piles of paper and say the smaller one is what Freedom looked like? Or have Paul Ryan stand in front of a pie-chart for the wonky conservative crowd and say how unfair it is for healthy people to pay for the treatment of sick people? Really? That's it?
Paul Ryan is saying that he and the other leaders of the party will "make the necessary improvements and refinements" to get the thing back on track. But I really don't see how that's going to improve the situation, at all. The main "improvements" I see them Ryan making is stripping away the already minimal tax credits that replaced the subsidies in the ACA and ending the Medicaid expansion in 2018 instead of 2020. Removing those is a play to get the support of the Freedom Caucus assholes whose main problem with the current bill is that it does too much to help people get insurance and want to kill Medicaid as fast as they possibly can. Problem with that, though, is that if the bill removes the tax credits but keeps the provision allowing insurers to charge the elderly five times what they charge the young will only keep more people from buying insurance and more than likely cause people who already have coverage to drop it because it would get too expensive. Obviously, ending the Medicaid expansion would also drop the amount of new people signing on, and if the cuts went into effect, would also cause the amount of uninsured people to spike immediately instead of nine years from now.
If Ryan goes that route, he's sure to gain the extremist votes he needs which may, theoretically, carry him through in the House. Except, those measures would send the moderate Republicans in both the House and Senate running for the hills, and Republicans simply cannot afford that. Under the Reconciliation rules they're trying to pass thing under, they just need a simple majority to make the bill law; but since they only have a 52-48 majority in the Senate, losing just two people makes the bill dead in the water and there at least four Senators who have already said they'd bail on the bill over the Medicaid cut. Maybe, maybe, with enough cajoling and threats, they could drag two back into line to force the 50-50 tie and have Mike Pence cast the tie-breaker vote. Relying on desperation saving throws is never a good policy plan, though, so that makes me think they'll try a second, more winding way around the problem.
When everyone had a chance to read the bill (oh the benefits of short legislation), instead of being the one-stop shop for all things healthcare, it suddenly became phase one of a suddenly three part plan to repeal-and-replace Obamacare. After the bill was passed, Tom Price was to write up some regulations at some point that could possibly make way for the selling of insurance across state lines leading to the big finale of some super-awesome legislation to cap it all off and make all the conservative wet dreams come true. That this is all cobbled-together bullshit to distract people was pointed out by none other than Iran-letter shithead Tom Cotton, who was quick to mention that 1. Any regulations created by the Health Secretary would be subject to legal challenges so there's no way Republicans could control that outcome and 2. If Republicans really had legislation they thought could get 60 votes in the Senate, that's what they'd be trying to pass right now. There wouldn't be any need for all this hoop-jumping if they already had the capability to execute that part of the plan.
Nevertheless, what I'm expecting to happen is Ryan will role out a more craven version of the current bill with some vague bullshit schedule for Phase 2 and Phase 3 to kick in. I'm sure they'll be suitably delayed until after the midterm elections, so that Republicans can have a better shot at building their majorities in Congress and better stack the bench with sympathetic judges, of course. In no way at all will it be a blatant stall tactic to dupe people into thinking he's actually trying to accomplish something, nope, not from him, stand-up guy that he is. I haven't mentioned the possibility that Ryan and the Trump White House will role all those things together in one grand bill and present it to Congress because, well, that simply isn't going to happen. If they did that, they'd be setting themselves up for at least a year-long debate much like the ACA went through with everything in the bill getting dragged across the coals every single day. There's no way in hell they'd set themselves up for that kind of punishment, not when they've already got their backs against the wall trying to cobble together a simple majority on a budget reconciliation measure. They're stupid, sure, but even I don't think they're that stupid.
The most enjoyable aspect of this whole thing, for me, is watching Republicans realize how completely and utterly they have fucked themselves over with all the fanatical rabble-rousing they did against Obamacare. Because now, if they pass this bill, it will wreck so much havoc against the old and poor white-working class that elected them that success puts them at legitimate risk of being eaten-alive by their own base. On the other hand, if they don't pass anything, that same base will have some very pointed questions about why, after over half-a-decade of promises to repeal the worst thing since slavery the second they got into power, a Republican President with a Republican Congress failed to even put a dent into Obamacare's existence. If Congress fails to pass a healthcare bill quickly, that political failure will hang over the rest of Trump's administration and it will be impossible for him to recover from. Every other signature policy initiative he rolls out will be overshadowed by his inability to follow-through on one of his main campaign promises. It'll drive the little baby President nuts, and he'll lash out more and more against the Congressional leaders who couldn't deliver for him. It's a nifty little noose they've all tied for themselves, here's hoping that when it closes, it's as snug as it looks.
Much like the first Muslim ban, the scale and intensity of push back against the plan seems to have caught everyone completely off-guard; which, in context, is even worse this time around because the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote a report estimating that 26 million people would lose their coverage under the plan, which is two million more than the coffin-nail estimate the CBO did. So, armed with that knowledge, the best they could do was have Sean Spicer point at two piles of paper and say the smaller one is what Freedom looked like? Or have Paul Ryan stand in front of a pie-chart for the wonky conservative crowd and say how unfair it is for healthy people to pay for the treatment of sick people? Really? That's it?
Paul Ryan is saying that he and the other leaders of the party will "make the necessary improvements and refinements" to get the thing back on track. But I really don't see how that's going to improve the situation, at all. The main "improvements" I see them Ryan making is stripping away the already minimal tax credits that replaced the subsidies in the ACA and ending the Medicaid expansion in 2018 instead of 2020. Removing those is a play to get the support of the Freedom Caucus assholes whose main problem with the current bill is that it does too much to help people get insurance and want to kill Medicaid as fast as they possibly can. Problem with that, though, is that if the bill removes the tax credits but keeps the provision allowing insurers to charge the elderly five times what they charge the young will only keep more people from buying insurance and more than likely cause people who already have coverage to drop it because it would get too expensive. Obviously, ending the Medicaid expansion would also drop the amount of new people signing on, and if the cuts went into effect, would also cause the amount of uninsured people to spike immediately instead of nine years from now.
If Ryan goes that route, he's sure to gain the extremist votes he needs which may, theoretically, carry him through in the House. Except, those measures would send the moderate Republicans in both the House and Senate running for the hills, and Republicans simply cannot afford that. Under the Reconciliation rules they're trying to pass thing under, they just need a simple majority to make the bill law; but since they only have a 52-48 majority in the Senate, losing just two people makes the bill dead in the water and there at least four Senators who have already said they'd bail on the bill over the Medicaid cut. Maybe, maybe, with enough cajoling and threats, they could drag two back into line to force the 50-50 tie and have Mike Pence cast the tie-breaker vote. Relying on desperation saving throws is never a good policy plan, though, so that makes me think they'll try a second, more winding way around the problem.
When everyone had a chance to read the bill (oh the benefits of short legislation), instead of being the one-stop shop for all things healthcare, it suddenly became phase one of a suddenly three part plan to repeal-and-replace Obamacare. After the bill was passed, Tom Price was to write up some regulations at some point that could possibly make way for the selling of insurance across state lines leading to the big finale of some super-awesome legislation to cap it all off and make all the conservative wet dreams come true. That this is all cobbled-together bullshit to distract people was pointed out by none other than Iran-letter shithead Tom Cotton, who was quick to mention that 1. Any regulations created by the Health Secretary would be subject to legal challenges so there's no way Republicans could control that outcome and 2. If Republicans really had legislation they thought could get 60 votes in the Senate, that's what they'd be trying to pass right now. There wouldn't be any need for all this hoop-jumping if they already had the capability to execute that part of the plan.
Nevertheless, what I'm expecting to happen is Ryan will role out a more craven version of the current bill with some vague bullshit schedule for Phase 2 and Phase 3 to kick in. I'm sure they'll be suitably delayed until after the midterm elections, so that Republicans can have a better shot at building their majorities in Congress and better stack the bench with sympathetic judges, of course. In no way at all will it be a blatant stall tactic to dupe people into thinking he's actually trying to accomplish something, nope, not from him, stand-up guy that he is. I haven't mentioned the possibility that Ryan and the Trump White House will role all those things together in one grand bill and present it to Congress because, well, that simply isn't going to happen. If they did that, they'd be setting themselves up for at least a year-long debate much like the ACA went through with everything in the bill getting dragged across the coals every single day. There's no way in hell they'd set themselves up for that kind of punishment, not when they've already got their backs against the wall trying to cobble together a simple majority on a budget reconciliation measure. They're stupid, sure, but even I don't think they're that stupid.
The most enjoyable aspect of this whole thing, for me, is watching Republicans realize how completely and utterly they have fucked themselves over with all the fanatical rabble-rousing they did against Obamacare. Because now, if they pass this bill, it will wreck so much havoc against the old and poor white-working class that elected them that success puts them at legitimate risk of being eaten-alive by their own base. On the other hand, if they don't pass anything, that same base will have some very pointed questions about why, after over half-a-decade of promises to repeal the worst thing since slavery the second they got into power, a Republican President with a Republican Congress failed to even put a dent into Obamacare's existence. If Congress fails to pass a healthcare bill quickly, that political failure will hang over the rest of Trump's administration and it will be impossible for him to recover from. Every other signature policy initiative he rolls out will be overshadowed by his inability to follow-through on one of his main campaign promises. It'll drive the little baby President nuts, and he'll lash out more and more against the Congressional leaders who couldn't deliver for him. It's a nifty little noose they've all tied for themselves, here's hoping that when it closes, it's as snug as it looks.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Milo, Pobrecito
If there's one thing that never gets old it's watching professional assholes getting swallowed up in their own shit storms. Seeing Milo Yiannapolous get booted from CPAC and lose his book deal with Simon and Schuster after the video of him saying sex between 30-year-olds and 14-year-olds is fine if the teenager consents to it and that he was the instigator of his own molestation on the Joe Rogan podcast started making the Internet rounds. Milo, of course, deeply regretted his word choices now that they've come back to bite him so viciously, and even made a Facebook post with links to his stories of outing other pedophiles as proof of his hatred for the practice. The only problem with all of that is the first person he names was never even charged with any sex crimes, and the second has had accusations against her going back to 2006. So, of the three, one was never actually charged with anything, ever, the second was Milo piggybacking off of long established info, and the third is up for trial. Not exactly the sterling crusader record he's projecting, but, we all have to work with what we have.
It's been legitimately hilarious watching Milo trying to play the victim in all this. The guy who got kicked off Twitter for telling his followers to hurl racist and sexist slurs at Leslie Jones because... she's black and a woman or something is suddenly deploring how awful it is that people can suffer because of public pressure generated from something on the internet. Indeed, dude, that's just awful.
The more interesting aspect of all this is just how shocked Milo, someone who makes a living outraging people, is that people are outraged by something he said. Well, more specifically, that he's experiencing negative consequences for said outrage instead of getting paid for it. Giving liberals the vapors has always been Milo's bread and butter, now that he's resigned from Breitbart, however, Milo doesn't have the direct platform to rebuild is brand to his main audience. Sure, he's still got his Facebook profile now, but it's looking like what was supposed to be a banner year for the self-proclaimed dangerous faggot will instead start to be very lean indeed.
Which, really, he should've seen coming. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are in a lot of ways Milo's forebears in exemplifying right-wing douchery and both of them had their own falls from grace (although the two of them actually got to deliver their speeches to CPAC before that happened). Limbaugh did himself in with the whole Sandra Fluke fiasco, which cost him advertisers and affiliates he's never been able to recover from. Beck burned out because that's really the only road his brand of crazy made available to him, and has been sliding ever deeper into irrelevance over at The Blaze. So, the good news seems to be that once these assholes cross the point of no return, there's really no coming back for them. Because for all the talk about how these guys are men of their own making, men who are bold and reshape the world with their sheer force of personality, when the chips are down all of them turn out to be petty little things that just wind up complaining about how unfair the world is and they just can't get a fair shake from all the PC, SJW Feminazi's out to get them.
Underneath all his flamboyance, Milo is a garden variety white-supremacist, and once someone new comes along to justify conservatives hate-boners, he'll be left to wither along with the rest of the right-wing blowhards who got shunted once they became too toxic to support; and a demagogue without a microphone, after all, is just a loud, belligerent asshole you have to skip past on the sidewalk. Good riddance, I say, and on to the next.
It's been legitimately hilarious watching Milo trying to play the victim in all this. The guy who got kicked off Twitter for telling his followers to hurl racist and sexist slurs at Leslie Jones because... she's black and a woman or something is suddenly deploring how awful it is that people can suffer because of public pressure generated from something on the internet. Indeed, dude, that's just awful.
The more interesting aspect of all this is just how shocked Milo, someone who makes a living outraging people, is that people are outraged by something he said. Well, more specifically, that he's experiencing negative consequences for said outrage instead of getting paid for it. Giving liberals the vapors has always been Milo's bread and butter, now that he's resigned from Breitbart, however, Milo doesn't have the direct platform to rebuild is brand to his main audience. Sure, he's still got his Facebook profile now, but it's looking like what was supposed to be a banner year for the self-proclaimed dangerous faggot will instead start to be very lean indeed.
Which, really, he should've seen coming. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are in a lot of ways Milo's forebears in exemplifying right-wing douchery and both of them had their own falls from grace (although the two of them actually got to deliver their speeches to CPAC before that happened). Limbaugh did himself in with the whole Sandra Fluke fiasco, which cost him advertisers and affiliates he's never been able to recover from. Beck burned out because that's really the only road his brand of crazy made available to him, and has been sliding ever deeper into irrelevance over at The Blaze. So, the good news seems to be that once these assholes cross the point of no return, there's really no coming back for them. Because for all the talk about how these guys are men of their own making, men who are bold and reshape the world with their sheer force of personality, when the chips are down all of them turn out to be petty little things that just wind up complaining about how unfair the world is and they just can't get a fair shake from all the PC, SJW Feminazi's out to get them.
Underneath all his flamboyance, Milo is a garden variety white-supremacist, and once someone new comes along to justify conservatives hate-boners, he'll be left to wither along with the rest of the right-wing blowhards who got shunted once they became too toxic to support; and a demagogue without a microphone, after all, is just a loud, belligerent asshole you have to skip past on the sidewalk. Good riddance, I say, and on to the next.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
In Stupid We Trust
If there's one saving grace to the Trump presidency, it's that Trump sucks at his job. This isn't exactly surprising, considering anytime Trump directly led a company with his name on it it quickly went bankrupt, but still, there's a small comfort in knowing that someone with such a long history of executive failure has learned absolutely nothing from the experience. Who knew that Trump's pathological inability to admit to failure could actually be a boon? If he isn't going to adapt or improve himself, he can't really be all that effective, which, like I said, is at least something to be optimistic about.
That incompetence was on full display in every aspect of the creation and implementation of his Muslim Ban executive order. The act is the first real, concrete policy Trump has followed through on and it has fallen apart in an almost embarrassing easy way. From it's muddled and confused implementation to its patently off-the-top-of-their-head legal defense, it is incredibly obvious that no one in the Administration actually took five minutes to think about what would happen once the order was put into effect. I say this because it's really difficult for me to accept that the best legal argument the Justice Department could come up with would be to stand up in front of a judge and say with a straight face that banning people from countries that have literally never been involved in any terrorist attack on the U.S. is in the interest of national security, totally, that's all that it is. That their (ahem) trump card when that argument failed would be "Well, it's national security and stuff, so, uh, the courts don't have a right to rule on that. So there," is proof enough to me that nobody at Justice actually had the chance to look at the order and prepare themselves for the inevitable challenges that would follow.
It is also isn't hard to accept that no lawyer or legal expert looked at the order before it went out, either. Because if they had, they probably would've mentioned that banning people with green cards and visas- a.k.a people who have already been granted the legal right to enter the country- is an easily exploitable legal issue to shut down the whole order. They would've also pointed out that shutting out potentially tens of thousands of people from entering the country without any due process for said people to challenge their exclusion is also incredibly shaky legal ground to stand on and won't survive the first person to challenge it. But it honest-to-goodness looks like Trump et al. did nothing to avoid these pitfalls because the idea that someone would try to stop them never seems to have crossed their mind.
Which is mind-boggling when you think about it. The Muslim Ban was already one of the most controversial aspects of a Trump presidency when the idea spilled out of his mouth in the primaries. And yet, the Administration was still caught flat-footed by the counter-punch virtually anyone with skin the game promised would immediately come if he made that policy a reality. So, the question becomes, if the President is this incapable of handling the obvious challenges to his policies, what's he going to do when an actual curve-ball comes his way?
Sure, it's nice to be snarky about how his first signature proposal is going down in flames. And it's also fun to snipe at the Republicans shitting bricks over the political consequences of something they've been threatening for seven years now. Sadly, the nature of the job means that we are going to need Trump to make a good decision about something, at some point. That our main hope legitimately seems to be that since he is so incredibly dumb he may bungle his own fuck-ups and thus limit their damage is the opposite of comforting. Then again, we wouldn't really need hope if we had something good to look forward to, would we?
Of course, there is an alternative. I could be wrong about everything, and the response the Trump team took could actually be the result of many long, carefully thought out conversations. I don't really want to consider this option because if this is what the best the Trump administration can do, on purpose, then the possibility of what could happen when they have to make a decision on the fly with no time to think is just too goddamn depressing to think about.
That incompetence was on full display in every aspect of the creation and implementation of his Muslim Ban executive order. The act is the first real, concrete policy Trump has followed through on and it has fallen apart in an almost embarrassing easy way. From it's muddled and confused implementation to its patently off-the-top-of-their-head legal defense, it is incredibly obvious that no one in the Administration actually took five minutes to think about what would happen once the order was put into effect. I say this because it's really difficult for me to accept that the best legal argument the Justice Department could come up with would be to stand up in front of a judge and say with a straight face that banning people from countries that have literally never been involved in any terrorist attack on the U.S. is in the interest of national security, totally, that's all that it is. That their (ahem) trump card when that argument failed would be "Well, it's national security and stuff, so, uh, the courts don't have a right to rule on that. So there," is proof enough to me that nobody at Justice actually had the chance to look at the order and prepare themselves for the inevitable challenges that would follow.
It is also isn't hard to accept that no lawyer or legal expert looked at the order before it went out, either. Because if they had, they probably would've mentioned that banning people with green cards and visas- a.k.a people who have already been granted the legal right to enter the country- is an easily exploitable legal issue to shut down the whole order. They would've also pointed out that shutting out potentially tens of thousands of people from entering the country without any due process for said people to challenge their exclusion is also incredibly shaky legal ground to stand on and won't survive the first person to challenge it. But it honest-to-goodness looks like Trump et al. did nothing to avoid these pitfalls because the idea that someone would try to stop them never seems to have crossed their mind.
Which is mind-boggling when you think about it. The Muslim Ban was already one of the most controversial aspects of a Trump presidency when the idea spilled out of his mouth in the primaries. And yet, the Administration was still caught flat-footed by the counter-punch virtually anyone with skin the game promised would immediately come if he made that policy a reality. So, the question becomes, if the President is this incapable of handling the obvious challenges to his policies, what's he going to do when an actual curve-ball comes his way?
Sure, it's nice to be snarky about how his first signature proposal is going down in flames. And it's also fun to snipe at the Republicans shitting bricks over the political consequences of something they've been threatening for seven years now. Sadly, the nature of the job means that we are going to need Trump to make a good decision about something, at some point. That our main hope legitimately seems to be that since he is so incredibly dumb he may bungle his own fuck-ups and thus limit their damage is the opposite of comforting. Then again, we wouldn't really need hope if we had something good to look forward to, would we?
Of course, there is an alternative. I could be wrong about everything, and the response the Trump team took could actually be the result of many long, carefully thought out conversations. I don't really want to consider this option because if this is what the best the Trump administration can do, on purpose, then the possibility of what could happen when they have to make a decision on the fly with no time to think is just too goddamn depressing to think about.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Things Are Just Gonna Suck For a While, Aren't They?
We're almost a full week into the Trump Presidency and so far, it's looking like it's going to be as bad as most expected. Some of it was funny, like how Trump used an image from Obama's inauguration to make his Twitter profile look more impressive, or how he even stole the fucking cake design, because, if you're going to be petty and unoriginal, might as well fully commit to it. The best part, though, was sending his press secretary out to lie about everything as if the whole, sad spectacle wasn't recorded for posterity on every news network and social media platform available. Sadly, these are but unimportant distractions, and Trump is doing actual work to ruin pretty much anything he can get his baby hands on.
For starters, Congress is making serious in-roads at repealing the ACA. Now, the ACA was always one of those things the Obama administration did that I didn't particularity care for but, when considering the alternative, was better than nothing. The CBO estimated that if the repeal goes through, 32 million people will lose their insurance over ten years, with 18 million losing it in the first year alone. Naturally, Republicans started whinging that the estimate didn't include all the people who would be covered by their totally awesome, super-duper replacement. Thing is though, the CBO can't really take into account a policy that doesn't actually exist. It's weird that a party that has spent almost seven years lambasting something doesn't have something in the wings to replace said policy, but, there you go. The only real alternative that the Republicans have ever put out there is allowing insurance companies to sell their products across state lines.
The idea is that the increased competition will drive prices lower, but for that to work, you would need companies to actually show up and ply their trade. So far, Maine, Georgia, and Wyoming are the only states who allow out-of-state companies to sell insurance to their residents. Problem is, literally no one has showed up to take advantage of this. Low population densities and the cost of establishing a network were the main reasons Maine and Wyoming health officials gave for the failure of the policy to take off, and there's no reason to believe that those same problems will play out across the country. Granted, it must be hard for Republicans to come up with a "free-market" alternative to the ACA given that the ACA, when it was conceived by the Heritage Foundation, is the free-market alternative.
The whole system of state level exchanges was created to push the companies best situated to provide insurance coverage against each other and the individual mandate was created to make sure enough healthy people where forced into the system as a counterweight to all the sick people the insurance companies would suddenly be required to cover. But as we've seen, this still leaves a lot of holes to fall through and an almost hilarious inconsistency in the level of coverage provided. Universal coverage just isn't something private insurers have any actual means or incentive to provide and maybe, after all those millions of people lose their coverage and the ones who still have coverage get reminded that gigantic premium hikes weren't an Obamacare invention (and they were actually bigger), maybe, finally, there will enough of an outcry for us to get a universal-health program like the rest of the world and we can finally done with this bullshit.
Up next is that idiot fucking wall. Trump signed an executive order to began construction on it, but there's still that pesky "making Mexico pay for it" thing to deal with. Today, Trump proposed a 20% tariff on all Mexican imports to pay for the thing, but, how well that is going to work is, shall we say, controversial. Mexico is our third-largest trading partner, and any tariff imposed on their goods is guaranteed to be matched by Enrique Pena Nieto's government to counter-act it. There's also the issue of assuming that Mexico will maintain it's current level of trade with us with the full knowledge that said trade is financing something that's supposed to be a direct punishment to its citizens. If trade where to suddenly drop off, then, well, Trump would have to find another way to finance his little vanity project. There's also the issue of getting such a tariff passed in the first place; I seriously doubt that a free-trade loving Republican Congress will rush into a trade war, but if they don't, there are legal ways for Trump to impose the tariff directly. How well that will go over though, is, again, seriously in question.
I admit, it's depressing to see a party who used to tout the fall of the Berlin Wall-that international symbol of fear and oppression- as one of its main political accomplishments be reduced to such a fearful and pathetic state that they are basically clamoring for their own version on a grander scale. Then again, given the rash of proposed bills in Republican state houses that effectively criminalize mass protests Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and the Women's March all make use of, maybe the Republican Party realized that maybe all those Communist dictators they used to lambaste where really on to something when they made any mass expression of dissent a crime. Who really cares about Freedom of Speech or Assembly if all people use it for is to show how much they hate you?
Thee's been a steady, global trend of fascism in right wing parties around the world, and the Republican Party is showing that it isn't immune to this. So the real question becomes, what are the Democrats going to do about it? The Democratic Party is in a really, really bad way. Under the Obama administration, the Party lost almost every State legislature and Governor's house in the country, so their ability to make changes on a state level against any Trump's agenda is basically null. It'll be two years until they can even hope to take a majority in either house of Congress, so they won't be of much good on a Federal level, either. So, now would be a really good time to re-evaluate how they do things.
My suggestion is that they become a Party that actually does something for people again. For decades, the Democratic platform has been "We aren't as bad as Republicans." Sure, whispering sweet nothings into people's ears while you fuck them over is considerate on some level, it isn't actually all that helpful. And, honestly, if you run a candidate who's only real claim to the Presidency is "She's not as bad as Trump" and that candidate loses, that whole strategy has proven itself worthless. Because, really, if it can't beat him, what good is it?
If Democrats ever want to regain their prestige, they have to champion things that give tangible, concrete benefits to their citizens. things like universal healthcare, union jobs, a better public education system including tuition-free college and trade schools, all of these things will build better lives for anyone living under them. Democrats will not survive if they continue to be the party of social tolerance and elite financial interests, the unavoidable compromises of that position are what drove so many people into the arms of third-party candidates in the first place and if Democrats keep doing what they've been doing, that trend will only increase. The worst part of it all, though, is that those seemingly radical proposals are stupidly popular, so if Democrats actually found the integrity to run on a platform based of those policies, they'd have no problem winning back the country. But, those campaign checks cash really well, and they do have lots of zeroes, so, you know, maybe all they need to do is keep calling Republicans racists and rude, right? Right?
So that's where we are, a country lead by increasingly tyrannical conservatives with a petulant child as their leader, and an opposition so hampered by their own contradictions they can't actually muster a valid alternative. It's nice to be great again.
For starters, Congress is making serious in-roads at repealing the ACA. Now, the ACA was always one of those things the Obama administration did that I didn't particularity care for but, when considering the alternative, was better than nothing. The CBO estimated that if the repeal goes through, 32 million people will lose their insurance over ten years, with 18 million losing it in the first year alone. Naturally, Republicans started whinging that the estimate didn't include all the people who would be covered by their totally awesome, super-duper replacement. Thing is though, the CBO can't really take into account a policy that doesn't actually exist. It's weird that a party that has spent almost seven years lambasting something doesn't have something in the wings to replace said policy, but, there you go. The only real alternative that the Republicans have ever put out there is allowing insurance companies to sell their products across state lines.
The idea is that the increased competition will drive prices lower, but for that to work, you would need companies to actually show up and ply their trade. So far, Maine, Georgia, and Wyoming are the only states who allow out-of-state companies to sell insurance to their residents. Problem is, literally no one has showed up to take advantage of this. Low population densities and the cost of establishing a network were the main reasons Maine and Wyoming health officials gave for the failure of the policy to take off, and there's no reason to believe that those same problems will play out across the country. Granted, it must be hard for Republicans to come up with a "free-market" alternative to the ACA given that the ACA, when it was conceived by the Heritage Foundation, is the free-market alternative.
The whole system of state level exchanges was created to push the companies best situated to provide insurance coverage against each other and the individual mandate was created to make sure enough healthy people where forced into the system as a counterweight to all the sick people the insurance companies would suddenly be required to cover. But as we've seen, this still leaves a lot of holes to fall through and an almost hilarious inconsistency in the level of coverage provided. Universal coverage just isn't something private insurers have any actual means or incentive to provide and maybe, after all those millions of people lose their coverage and the ones who still have coverage get reminded that gigantic premium hikes weren't an Obamacare invention (and they were actually bigger), maybe, finally, there will enough of an outcry for us to get a universal-health program like the rest of the world and we can finally done with this bullshit.
Up next is that idiot fucking wall. Trump signed an executive order to began construction on it, but there's still that pesky "making Mexico pay for it" thing to deal with. Today, Trump proposed a 20% tariff on all Mexican imports to pay for the thing, but, how well that is going to work is, shall we say, controversial. Mexico is our third-largest trading partner, and any tariff imposed on their goods is guaranteed to be matched by Enrique Pena Nieto's government to counter-act it. There's also the issue of assuming that Mexico will maintain it's current level of trade with us with the full knowledge that said trade is financing something that's supposed to be a direct punishment to its citizens. If trade where to suddenly drop off, then, well, Trump would have to find another way to finance his little vanity project. There's also the issue of getting such a tariff passed in the first place; I seriously doubt that a free-trade loving Republican Congress will rush into a trade war, but if they don't, there are legal ways for Trump to impose the tariff directly. How well that will go over though, is, again, seriously in question.
I admit, it's depressing to see a party who used to tout the fall of the Berlin Wall-that international symbol of fear and oppression- as one of its main political accomplishments be reduced to such a fearful and pathetic state that they are basically clamoring for their own version on a grander scale. Then again, given the rash of proposed bills in Republican state houses that effectively criminalize mass protests Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and the Women's March all make use of, maybe the Republican Party realized that maybe all those Communist dictators they used to lambaste where really on to something when they made any mass expression of dissent a crime. Who really cares about Freedom of Speech or Assembly if all people use it for is to show how much they hate you?
Thee's been a steady, global trend of fascism in right wing parties around the world, and the Republican Party is showing that it isn't immune to this. So the real question becomes, what are the Democrats going to do about it? The Democratic Party is in a really, really bad way. Under the Obama administration, the Party lost almost every State legislature and Governor's house in the country, so their ability to make changes on a state level against any Trump's agenda is basically null. It'll be two years until they can even hope to take a majority in either house of Congress, so they won't be of much good on a Federal level, either. So, now would be a really good time to re-evaluate how they do things.
My suggestion is that they become a Party that actually does something for people again. For decades, the Democratic platform has been "We aren't as bad as Republicans." Sure, whispering sweet nothings into people's ears while you fuck them over is considerate on some level, it isn't actually all that helpful. And, honestly, if you run a candidate who's only real claim to the Presidency is "She's not as bad as Trump" and that candidate loses, that whole strategy has proven itself worthless. Because, really, if it can't beat him, what good is it?
If Democrats ever want to regain their prestige, they have to champion things that give tangible, concrete benefits to their citizens. things like universal healthcare, union jobs, a better public education system including tuition-free college and trade schools, all of these things will build better lives for anyone living under them. Democrats will not survive if they continue to be the party of social tolerance and elite financial interests, the unavoidable compromises of that position are what drove so many people into the arms of third-party candidates in the first place and if Democrats keep doing what they've been doing, that trend will only increase. The worst part of it all, though, is that those seemingly radical proposals are stupidly popular, so if Democrats actually found the integrity to run on a platform based of those policies, they'd have no problem winning back the country. But, those campaign checks cash really well, and they do have lots of zeroes, so, you know, maybe all they need to do is keep calling Republicans racists and rude, right? Right?
So that's where we are, a country lead by increasingly tyrannical conservatives with a petulant child as their leader, and an opposition so hampered by their own contradictions they can't actually muster a valid alternative. It's nice to be great again.
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