Trump's Tweets Threaten To Destabilize Insurance Markets

So if they can't abolish the ACA, they'll make it fail.

Seen on facebook:

Mooch's week was so bad, if his dog dies he'll be a country song.

 kcar wrote: 
Gotta admit that he makes such regular, egregious blunders and statements I'm sometimes sure that he's trying to get thrown out of office. He's testing that "I could shoot someone..." statement he made earlier.

Does Trump want to go to jail? 


Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer

...

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”

The claims were later shown to be misleading.

...

The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.

As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III looks into potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president’s direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup.

“This was . . . unnecessary,” said one of the president’s advisers, who like most other people interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. “Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.”

...

Trump, they say, is increasingly acting as his own lawyer, strategist and publicist, often disregarding the recommendations of the professionals he has hired.

“He refuses to sit still,” the presidential adviser said. “He doesn’t think he’s in any legal jeopardy, so he really views this as a political problem he is going to solve by himself.”


...

Peter Zeidenberg, the deputy special prosecutor who investigated the George W. Bush administration’s leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, said Mueller will have to dig into the crafting of Trump Jr.’s statement aboard Air Force One.

Prosecutors typically assume that any misleading statement is an effort to throw investigators off the track, Zeidenberg said.

“The thing that really strikes me about this is the stupidity of involving the president,” Zeidenberg said. “They are still treating this like a family-run business and they have a PR problem. . . . What they don’t seem to understand is this is a criminal investigation involving all of them.”

 steeler wrote: 

I partially agree with you, but the US does not tolerate arrangements diverging from a two-party system for very long. Even if we could break that system, Republican and Democratic voters seem to have separate (albeit fuzzy) ideas about the role of government, which makes it difficult to find common ground leading to compromise positions.  

 Lazy8 wrote: 
As has become customary for you, you are assailing an argument I have not made. I fully recognize that the pie charts show a majority voting against the other candidate. This still falls into the category of voting for — or against — a candidate based on their like or dislike (possiBly hatred) for a candidate. This is not policy-based, especially not when it is voiced as an intense dislike or hatred of the  candidate himself or herself. Now, to your point, it also is evidence of voters who see only the duopoly of Democratic/Republican and see themselves as voting for the lesser of 2 evils. That is a problem, one I have commented upon in this forum over the years. You apparently have missed those comments or are in a rush to mischaracterize what I am saying — or both. I am a believer in our need to break out of the duopoly. We also need to stop viewing elections as a kind of blood sport. And we need to start having dialog about policies instead of personalities. Breaking the duopoly will not automatically eliminate the problem I have cited — and it is a big problem. I am surprised you are unable to see it.

 steeler wrote:
What matters here? The horse race, or what the candidates mean to the country?

Almost half of Trump's and Clinton's voters aren't voting for their candidate, they're voting against another candidate. As far as they're concerned you could run anybody—even a corrupt, dishonest oligarch—against what they see as the enemy and they'd vote for that person just so the other corrupt, dishonest oligarch won't win. They didn't like the choice in front of them but held their noses and voted for it to avoid what they saw as an even worse outcome.

Trump and Clinton each had less than 25% of the voters' enthusiastic support. If only those who actually liked their party's nominee and his/her agenda had voted for him/her and the rest voted for somebody else the election would have looked quite different. If the half of each incumbent party's voters had settled on the same candidate we'd have a 50-25-25 race, and both reptilian overlords would have been kicked to the curb. If, say, half the dissatisfied Democrats and 2/3 of the dissatisfied Republicans had picked the same candidate it would have been a 29-21-25-25 race, and we'd still have a different outcome—with the electoral college still a factor, but at least the House would have had more options had no one won outright.

You're looking at this as if the two party duopoly were permanent, inevitable, and an immutable law of politics. It's not. It's entrenched and well-defended, but ultimately it depends on voters falling for it. And that support is teetering on the brink.

Trump Says No ‘Chaos!’ at White House but Continues Threats

 miamizsun wrote: 
What this says to me is that those who assess their candidates on whether they like them or not outweigh those who are assessing the policy positions of those candidates. it is the selling of the President on steroids, and it inevitably ends up where we are now — the electing of a President as reality TV. Here we are now! Entertain us!

 Steely_D wrote: 
or maybe they voted for the lesser of two evils

i thought i saw where like 50% of the voters polled admitting to voting against the other candidate

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edit: this is from slate so it has to be true

 LowPhreak wrote: 
I voted John Anderson.
I voted Ralph Nader.
I voted Jill Stein.

And I repeat: candidates of any party tell their voters "I'm not one of them; I'm here for you." That's exactly what Trump said, although a bit less eloquently, and why people voted for him and not Hillary.

 kurtster wrote: 
Hint: he has orange skin and bad hair. That is the only person that Trump is helping.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
 yep.. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
 You are en fuego today!  

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I guess if you set the bar low enough... even Trump might be able to slink over it.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 

 VV wrote:
Yes. Zero is not the lowest number in a down market.

The best presidencies had the best presidents. Nothing is never the worst thing that could happen.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Huh? You're willing to wait indefinitely for zero returns? Remind me to never listen to stock tips from you. In the meantime, he demeans and lessens the office while presiding over a West Wing no-holds-barred cage match in which most of his staff is engaged. 

Yes, history tells us the best presidencies were always mired in dysfunction.