Mojo Hand

IMO you don't have to convince any of them. There's more than enough votes to defeat Trump. Marginalize his supporters and move on, I say.

If that worked, Trump wouldn't be rock-solid at 40ish % no matter what he does. People have been trying to work on their relatives for 3 years, and the ones who remain fervent Trump supporters just don't care. You can point out who will be hurt all you want, but they won't believe you because it's all fake news to them. It's a cult, and it's extremely hard to talk someone out of being in a cult. Unless you've got a deprogrammer on retainer, it's not going to happen.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michigan-town-prepares-auto-plant-close-democratic-candidates-debate-labor-n1024376 Anyone who thinks Dem candidates should kowtow to these fucking idiots is nuts. They blame Dems for everything that's happened to them as the economy has evolved, and they don't give a shit that Trump is making it worse. At this point they just want other people to get fucked over as much as they feel they've been. They don't want the truth, which is that those jobs aren't coming back, and they don't want the solutions that Dems are offering, like secure health care and government investment in clean energy manufacturing, so what is the point? They're gone. Dems don't need them to win, so better to focus resources elsewhere. Trump is at 42 - 54 approval in Michigan as is, so there's more than enough reachable people without the "forgotten (white) man" whose job just moved to Mexico under Trump but still loves the guy.

We've accepted a nuclear, murderous North Korea into the community of legitimate nations. Purely for Trump's ego. Grand.

But doesn't it also mean prohibiting by statute all private plans offering coverage that overlaps with with MFA provides?

So = I want the Dem candidate to win. If Bernie or Warren win the primary, abolishing private insurance will be a big part of the general. If it doesn't hurt them, great. But I think being a little less absolute on this would help with a big chunk of voters.

That all makes sense. But many voters are scared about jumping in all the way. Why not say, "Hey, I won't abolish competing private plans, but MFA is gonna be so good that they're going to go away as people switch to MFA." That way you're being honest that private plans won't be able to last while still giving people the comfort that it won't be so sudden. On another note, do you happen to know what happens to paychecks under MFA? Do the employer and employee contributions just get sent to the government, or do the pay period contributions just go away, and paychecks will go up to compensate?

That's the joke — that Trump wrote the note and made his own hands extra huge.

She might be the perfect candidate for me, if I actually believed the things she says. But I think she's only playing progressive for the primary, and we'd see a sharp swing to the center if she became president. Which may be what appeals to you, but it is not my preference. Still, she's a top 5 candidate for me based on other attributes.

What is the rationale for abolishing private insurance that competes with MFA coverage? Like, why not just implement MFA without such a provision and let competitors die on the vine rather than expressly banning them?

They just wanna party Party just for you

Agjhhhgg fml

I don't know. If you're going to make a charge like that and not give an explanation, it raises questions.

Wow. I wonder if he's talking out of his ass or if this is about the investigation into the hacked voting equipment in North Carolina and maybe elsewhere.

And, by the way, the reason it matters is because the alt-right movement is about mainstreaming white supremacy through pretext and deception. Trump, Bannon, and the rest want to make it acceptable for regular folks to align with Nazis and white supremacists on policy while maintaining deniability about being racists themselves. And that's precisely what Trump was doing with his "both sides" comments. He invented a group of good people who marched alongside Nazis for non-racist reasons, and Republicans and useful idiots like Onboard scurry around defending the proposition that such a thing could even exist, let alone that it actually happened at that event. "Hey he clearly said at the end that he didn't like Nazis, just the good people who were with them, there's nothing racist about that!" And the seed is planted and grows: it's no problem for people to join a coalition with Nazis and white supremacists, or attend Trump rallies cheering alongside Nazis and white supremacists, or fight for the policies that Nazis and white supremacists support for racist reasons. You can be arm in arm with Nazis without being one of them yourself, so why not join them if you think we should honor people who fought to preserve slavery (because history!) or if you think we should stop Latino immigrants from coming (not because they're brown, but because America is full! No room left even in Montana!) or if you think we should ban Muslims from coming (not Muslims, just people coming from a list of these countries that happen to be Muslim!).

Well, ya see, there were all these history buffs who aren't racist at all, and some of their best friends are black, and they really cared about confederate statues for non-racist reasons. So they heard that Richard Spencer was throwing a white supremacist rally supporting the statues for racist reasons, and they thought it would be great to join forces with the Nazis even though they aren't at all racist themselves. And then they arrived and thought, hey why don't we walk with those fellows over there with the tiki torches chanting about Jews, because we forgot to bring our own flashlights and we need some light. And then Trump knew that this really happened, and wanted to make sure that everyone knew what was really important about the violent events leading to Heather Heyer's death, which is that there were some great history buffs caught up in the mix.

My take on the concentration camp semantics issue is: (1) Yes, the camps we are running fall within the definition of "concentration camp." (2) One can reasonably argue that they fell within that definition in 2014 and 2015. One can also reasonably argue that they did not cross the line until a number of recent policies were enacted to intentionally target migrants for maltreatment. (3) In common usage now, the term carries connotations of the Nazi's particular use of concentration camps, which was far worse than what we are doing here. (4) Opponents of our current immigration policies are aware of that, and are using it to bring awareness to the horrible things are actually doing. (5) Good.

Because Mexico is often not safe for refugees, and they don't want to die.

"His goal was to say words that were broadcast to television viewers, and he knocked that out of the park."

That's false. Trump was talking about the specific Unite the Right rally, not the general debate over the statue, and his argument was that good people can and did join with white supremacists and neo-Nazis for non-racist reasons. And the reason he took so much heat for it is that (1) Trump was making up the whole distinction among the actual people who protested that night, so he was covering for actual white supremacists, and (2) Any such distinction is illegitimate, because if you join with Nazis for any reason you are not a very fine person.

Which policy and law are you talking about, and dating from when? These deaths appear to result from a combination of Trump blocking ports of entry and pressuring Mexican officials to send troops to clear away immigrants waiting on the Mexican side of the border. Assuming those reports are true, that appears to be based on new policy and no law, which is the basis for the lawsuit challenging these practices. My understanding that metering started in 2016 to deal with too many people to process, but now it is being used simply to prevent people from legally seeking asylum despite plenty of capacity for processing:

Sadly, because we're facing sociopathic policy rationalized by limited-empathy assholes.

Yeah but I bet she likes being a stroke away from becoming president.

The girl successfully crossed. The father went back to help others, she got scared and tried to swim back across alone, and they died while he was trying to save her. It was a tragic accident borne of tragic circumstances. We don't have the information to determine whether the risks that family took were justified, but we do have the information to conclude that our policies are adding to the desperation that is leading people to take such risks, and for no good reason.