President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Thoughts and prayers for the guy who only briefly ran the Trump campaign. (But who has known the Criminal in Chief for 30 years and who lived in Trump Tower for several years and may still for all I know.)

 

Minor (or maybe not) footnote in this, but...

Investigators sought Ms. Watkins’s information as part of an inquiry into whether James A. Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s former director of security, disclosed classified secrets to reporters. F.B.I. agents approached Ms. Watkins about a previous three-year romantic relationship she had with Mr. Wolfe, saying they were investigating unauthorized leaks.

She was 22 years old when she began 3-year sexual/romantic relationship with a 54-year-old source.

Ugh.

 

Justice Dept. Says Crucial Provisions of Obamacare Are Unconstitutional

"The Trump administration told a federal court on Thursday that it would no longer defend crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect consumers with pre-existing medical conditions." Fuck Jeff Sessions with a rusty slingblade.

I don't know what genius thought that doing this just before midterms was a good idea, but doing away with pre-existing condition protection puts Health Care back squarely on the front burner. The R's are going to get crucified over this.

I bet Susan Collins has a few choice words for McConnell as well.


Trump’s quiet campaign to bring back preexisting conditions

 

It's hurricane season, so I guess I better get the ole boat in ship shape so I can get out in the Gulf and gawk when the next one heads our way.

Trumpy, you stupid fuck.

 

One thing this country appears to fully support is coverage for pre-existing conditions.

This is intentionally kicking yourself in the crotch.

 

Yeah, but if the Rs lose in November, it'll just be the media's fault that they reported it.

 

Well, there goes the Cuyahoga River up in smoke.

 

Can't get the url to link – it defaults to the video – but the website is democracynow.org

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask Naomi—one of the things that you mentioned in the documentary was “Who is Puerto Rico for?” And one of the amazing things that’s occurred, largely as a result of Maria, as well, is the foreclosure rate of housing in Puerto Rico. There’s 55,000 people who are in foreclosures in Puerto Rico right now. An average of 14 families a day are into the foreclosure process.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this enormous change in property ownership that’s occurring on the island, again, fueled by the Maria disaster.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think this goes to Elizabeth’s point about how efficiently people are being moved off island, right? And such basic things aren’t being done to keep people there, right? Like being able to stay in your home or being able to send your kids to school. In fact, the opposite is happening. People are being evicted from their homes. They don’t need to be. And their schools, that are—

AMY GOODMAN: Evicted from some of their darkened homes?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, and also not darkened homes, right? And schools, that parents and teachers have come together to repair, are not being allowed to reopen, right? So the reason why people are being forced off the island is because they have to send their kids to school, they have to find housing. And as we saw in that clip from the documentary, there is a boom going on in luxury housing. There’s all kinds of land grabs taking place. The prices aren’t collapsing for that, but they had collapsed before, so there are all kinds of bargains available. And, you know, this is what we mean by “disaster capitalism” and the exacerbation of the very forces that turned this disaster into this massive human catastrophe. ...

ELIZABETH YEAMPIERRE: You know, Puerto Rico has always been seen as the recreational center, as an opportunity for the most privileged. It’s been exploited for so many years. It’s not new, it’s just extreme now. And so, we’re seeing that people are descending on the island. Even folks from the diaspora who have wanted to buy property in Puerto Rico are being stopped from doing that, even when they bring cash. It’s almost like they’re putting it all on lockdown so that they can put it on sale for another kind of buyer.

 

Gravest consequence of Trump is that the Republican Party realizes it doesn't even have to pretend to represent its constituency. It's not just Trump -- the GOP has been fostering this blinding rage against liberals for decades. But Trump has made everyone realize the extent to which they can go. His base would let them turn every river in the country into the Ganges as long as the libs wanted the opposite. The GOP's long game has always been to get us back to the good old days before Teddy Roosevelt. I'm not sure they ever imagined it could be this easy.