President Donald Trump's Final Days...

[BustyWomenLovr]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Why is the American government to be deciding who is allowed to be in charge in Cuba? On what basis are the American governmen (or the American people for that matter) even allowed to have an opinion concerning who is to govern Cuba? Surely this is a matter for the Cuban people to settle.

That is not my point - I'd rather see open doors and trade. The Cubans in Florida however want it both ways, and that has not worked. They want NO DEALINGS with Castros, but they send millions of dollars a year there. Where the hell do they think it goes? If they aren't Americans, move back, if they are, quit it. I swear some of them seem to prefer Batista back, but for some reason, that seems doubtful.

[movieman88]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Actually, unless you declare war first or have suffered an act of war and are retaliating, then killing a foreign head of state is in fact murder. Last time I checked, God told us not to do that.

It's assassination, that doesn't nessicarly equal murder.
As its not murder to kill in self defense or defense of others & freeing a country from a dictator counts as defense of others even if your doing it for selfish reasonss, the freeing of those in danger still gets done.

Originally Posted by Vaxter

Those are the people Trump likes best:

"He's running his country and at least he's a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country," Trump said. "I think our country does plenty of killing, also."

When asked last October if he believed the Middle East would be better today if Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein were still in power, the outspoken Republican said, "100 percent" and that "it's not even a contest."

He is talking about in terms of stability, would the region be more stable with a dictator in place, of course but that isn't nessicarly better or safer.

Personally I would prefer a unstable region with terrorist running about periodically doing small scale bombing, then living under a government who tortures & kills you as a matter of policy & has the resources to use chemical weapons & such larger scale attacks on the population.

Remember the 1988 gas attack that killed 5,000*Kurds.

[martynz]

Seems like he forgot to tell the US Navy.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g...-idUSKBN195322

[LadyLuck]

Tough times to be a Democrat. They were planning to portray Karen Handel's GOP defeat in the Georgia 6th District special election to fill the vacant House of Representatives seat as a referendum on the Trump presidency... except one problem. She won. Her opponent outspent her 6 to 1 on television ads and she still won. Seems like "Trump Sucks" doesn't amount to much of a platform these days. 95 percent of the Dem candidate's contributions came from outside of the state of Georgia. He couldn't even vote for himself because he doesn't live in the 6th District. The Dems have learned nothing from November 8th, 2016.

The CNN talking heads must hate drawing the short straw and having to work election night coverage.

[crinolynne]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

The CNN talking heads must hate drawing the short straw and having to work election night coverage.

It's been a Republican safe district for 40 plus years... shouldn't have even been close.

[diamelsx]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

Tough times to be a Democrat. They were planning to portray Karen Handel's GOP defeat in the Georgia 6th District special election to fill the vacant House of Representatives seat as a referendum on the Trump presidency... except one problem. She won. Her opponent outspent her 6 to 1 on television ads and she still won.

Is the party leadership pissed? Hell yeah. Is the Progressive wing of the party on the outside looking in sort of giggling on the inside thinking "If you would have listened to us instead of the money and the consultants..." This is also true.

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

Seems like "Trump Sucks" doesn't amount to much of a platform these days. 95 percent of the Dem candidate's contributions came from outside of the state of Georgia. He couldn't even vote for himself because he doesn't live in the 6th District. The Dems have learned nothing from November 8th, 2016.

The CNN talking heads must hate drawing the short straw and having to work election night coverage.

The party wanted to win this bad, not just to win the seat, but to rub the victory in the progressives' face. "See if we keep running to the right we will be able to pick off dissatisfied Trump voters." This stratagem has and will continue to fail cause of the base they sacrifice is going to be bigger than the votes they hope to gain. Textbook example of "a bird in the hand...." principle.

Originally Posted by crinolynne

It's been a Republican safe district for 40 plus years... shouldn't have even been close.

Considering the party leadership has been running messed up strategy I'm going to agree with you.

[diamelsx]

President Donald Trump announced at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday that he will seek legislation preventing immigrants from receiving welfare for at least five years after entering the country, although they are already barred from most benefits under a 1996 welfare law.

"I believe the time has come for new immigration rules which say those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years," Trump said to thunderous applause.

He added that he will be "putting in legislation to that effect very shortly."

It's unclear how such legislation would depart from policy already in place. The 1996 law, signed by President Bill Clinton, prohibits most immigrants from accessing federal programs such as Social Security and food stamps for their first five years in the US. Eligibility for local benefits programs, however, are usually determined by state governments.

Certain types of immigrants are exempt from the five-year block, including children, refugees, asylees, and US military personnel and their families.

Undocumented immigrants and people living in the US on non-immigrant visas, such as temporary foreign workers, are also barred from accessing most benefits.

source

[diamelsx]

The New York Times reports that the Trump White House is about to put out an executive order on drug pricing, and it looks as if the whole thing were basically written by big pharma.

In other words, America, we've just been sold out on the price of drugs.

According to the report and similar reporting from Kaiser Health News and Politico, a draft executive order includes nothing to curb prices. Instead, drug companies would be in line to get more power to charge monopoly prices overseas and be allowed to give even fewer discounts to hospitals with poor patients. And the administration is promising to roll back regulations that pharma has complained about.

Nothing for the American people; everything for the American corporations.

This can all be traced back to a meeting President Donald Trump had with pharmaceutical CEOs back in January. There, he basically outlined that he would be doing everything that's in the draft executive order, but he also told executives, "You have to keep your prices down."

That was it. Then they all got in their private jets and flew back to their corner offices. That day, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index had its best day in weeks, gaining nearly 3%, as the market indicated that no one was afraid of the big bad Trump.

You see, this meeting with CEOs was just supposed to be the start of how the White House tackled this problem. Ideally, after they left, Trump's team would get together and take their proposals in consideration with the volumes and volumes of research about this topic and put together something that could actually help to lower prices. Instead, it looks as if only the industry's suggestions made it into the proposed order.

Trump is the kid in the high-school group project who offers to turn in the final product so no one notices he didn't contribute anything at all.

It's not as if ideas to fix this aren't floating around Washington, and it's not as if legislators don't know the kinds of dirty games drug companies are playing. Earlier this month, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a panel on drug pricing and brought up a bunch of obvious issues that had become the center of the drug-pricing debate and, in some cases, Department of Justice investigations

Such as:

Collusion: As Allan Coukell, the senior director of health programs at Pew Charitable Trusts, pointed out, whenever one multiple-sclerosis drug hits the market, they all go up in price. This is not an accident, and it happens thanks in part to a lack of pricing transparency. In fact, last year the Obama Justice Department went after about a dozen big pharmaceutical companies, including the EpiPen maker Mylan, on suspicion of colluding to keep prices high. The makers of insulin were just accused of doing the same thing in a class-action lawsuit.
Pharmacy benefit managers: These are middlemen that are supposed to keep costs down by acting as gatekeepers to insurers. They also negotiate rebates for buying drugs in bulk. The problem is, they get to pocket some of that rebate for themselves (the exact amount is considered a "trade secret"), so one witness at the Senate panel suggested we do away with the rebate system altogether. One Republican senator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, agreed. "It seems like the rebate isn't going so well," he said. "Why not have a low up-front price, which would be the ultimate concession."
Myth busting: As it was made quite clear during the panel, research-and-development costs aren't what's really contributing to high drug prices when it comes to big pharma. More money is spent on marketing drugs than on developing them.
Now to be fair, there is one tiny measure in Trump's draft executive order that seems to hint at helping: basically taking PBM rebates out of Medicare. Of course, it's unclear how this order would tackle that, as there are no specifics and this would have to be legislated.

Another interesting idea mentioned in the proposed order is "value-based" drug pricing — paying drug companies for the value a drug brings to society or an individual. That could be a killer for some drug companies that make incredibly expensive drugs for rare diseases, but again, nothing concrete on that measure.

This toothless order is the result of asking some of the richest CEOs in America what to do about a problem they don't want to solve. And it settles something about the Trump administration. If you were hoping that the populist Trump from the campaign trail would keep some of the promises he made to his base, you can stop now.

Trump is not for his base; he's not for anyone. He's a corporatist, and he will continue letting corporations make decisions that his White House is either too lazy or too incompetent to make, to the detriment of Americans, whether they voted for him or not.
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[LaughingBoy]

Originally Posted by diamelsx

The New York Times reports that the Trump White House is about to put out an executive order on drug pricing, and it looks as if the whole thing were basically written by big pharma.


Trump is not for his base; he's not for anyone. He's a corporatist, and he will continue letting corporations make decisions that his White House is either too lazy or too incompetent to make, to the detriment of Americans, whether they voted for him or not.
source

Spot on. Ugh.

Weirdly, when it comes to things that make him money, or benefit his cronies, his administration is ...well, competent isn't the right word...let's say motivated.

[diamelsx]

Originally Posted by LaughingBoy

Spot on. Ugh.

Weirdly, when it comes to things that make him money, or benefit his cronies, his administration is ...well, competent isn't the right word...let's say motivated.

I going to ask "for what politican is this not the case?"