[AMV] President Trump #289 Nog steeds zonder inreisverbod

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Op maandag 3 april 2017 23:55 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel

Schimmig gedoe.

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The Unfit President
Unlike George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, Trump doesn’t seem to care about working out or eating healthy.

When Teddy Roosevelt was in office, he had the White House basement coated with mats. An avid martial artist, the 26th president wanted to be able to grapple and practice judo throws without leaving his home. Then the youngest man to assume the presidency (he was 42), he injected a certain vigor into the role: He invited accomplished boxers to the White House to spar with him, he led ambassadors on intense hikes, and he once livened up a formal luncheon by tossing a Swiss minister to the floor to demonstrate a judo hold. Thrice.

Roosevelt was the only martial artist to occupy the oval office, but his enthusiasm for exercise fits a pattern that’s become more marked among recent presidents. It’s not hard to see the appeal of an active president to constituents: Being the leader of the free world is a demanding job, and it’s comforting to know the person filling it will make it to the finish line. The same clearly holds for Supreme Court justices, as evidenced by widespread liberal concern about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s bone density and kale intake. (A recent article documenting the octogenarian’s workout regimen—a twice-weekly, hour-long circuit involving push-ups, planks, and weights—seems to have allayed some worries.)

Fear of death or disease aside, the president’s attitude toward his own health is important inasmuch as it can represent his deeper beliefs, which stand in for the values of the country as a whole. A commitment to working out suggests self-control, discipline, and a willingness to exert oneself in pursuit of a goal—ideas that align with the good old-fashioned American belief in meritocracy, however illusory.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, upon taking office, many recent presidents had special fitness-related requests and routines. Courted by two NFL teams while in college, Gerald Ford maintained his fitness in office with daily swims in the pool he had built on the White House grounds. A baseball player in his youth, George H.W. Bush dabbled in all kinds of sports as president, particularly running. Bill Clinton installed a jogging track on the South Lawn but preferred to run outside the White House gates, much to the chagrin of the Secret Service (admittedly, he ended more than one run at McDonald’s). George W. Bush liked mountain biking and was another avid runner, going so far as to put a treadmill on Air Force One so he’d never have to skip a workout.

Then there was Barack Obama, who started most days with a 45-minute weights-and-cardio session. In 2009, the 44th president had hoops and basketball lines added to the tennis court at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and regularly invited friends, and even former NBA players, to informal scrimmages. Exercise was not his only healthy habit. A famously disciplined eater, Obama managed to lose a few pounds while doing perhaps the world’s most demanding job. Whether he completely kicked a decades-long smoking habit has been debated, but he’s said to have transformed the health of others in the White House for the better, stocking the building with healthy food, encouraging staffers to participate in group fitness challenges, and offering the services of his own personal trainer.

Far from being insignificant activities squeezed into the cracks of their political lives, the sporting lives of past presidents have often been taken as symbols of their character and even their political beliefs. Roosevelt clearly practiced the “strenuous life” of “healthy combativeness” he preached in his speeches, and his willingness to enter a boxing ring was of a piece with the military preparedness he sought for America. George W. Bush talked about running in grand terms, encouraging others to sweat “for the good of their own health and for the good of the health of the nation.” Throughout Obama’s campaign, some argued that “the skinny kid with a funny name” used his love of basketball to counter claims that he was un-American. Others have compared Obama-the-basketball-player with Obama-the-politician: competitive, inclusive, pragmatic, likely to go left.

More recently, commentators have gone so far as to offer Obama’s physique as a symbol for the fitness of his administration—and Trump’s as its antithesis. A recent tweet placed pictures of the men side by side: To the left is a trim, shirtless Obama, his pecs glistening with sweat; to the right is a red-faced Trump, his gut testing the waistband of his golf slacks. The caption: “Obamacare vs. Trumpcare.”

Trump’s physical neglect is worlds away from the vigorous life led by Vladimir Putin, whose efforts to reassert Russia’s role as a muscular world power have involved the promotion of a literal strongman image. Widely circulated photos taken over the years show the leader partaking in many “manly" activities: horseback riding shirtless in the wilderness, doing the butterfly in a Siberian river, driving a Formula One race car, arm wrestling youths at a summer camp, and, more recently, pumping iron in a Sochi gym. He’s made no secret of the fact that he holds a black belt in judo, releasing a feature-length instructional DVD entitled Let’s Learn Judo With Vladimir Putin—which is worth a watch just to see an intent Putin warm up with some hip circles.

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Republican Health Proposal Would Undermine Coverage for Pre-existing Conditions

Throughout the debate to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and Republican congressional leaders have insisted they would retain a crucial, popular part of the health law: the promise that people can buy insurance even if they’ve had illnesses in the past.

Their efforts foundered last month, when a House health bill had to be pulled from the floor after it failed to attract enough support. Late Monday night, word emerged that the White House and the conservative lawmakers known as the Freedom Caucus had discussed a proposal to revive the bill. But the proposed changes would effectively cast the Affordable Care Act’s pre-existing conditions provision aside.

The terms, described by Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the head of the Freedom Caucus, are something like this: States would have the option to jettison two major parts of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations. They could decide to opt out of provisions that require insurers to cover a standard, minimum package of benefits, known as the essential health benefits. And they could decide to do away with a rule that requires insurance companies to charge the same price to everyone who is the same age, a provision called community rating.

The proposal is not final, but Mr. Meadows told reporters after the meeting that his members would be interested in such a bill. To pass the House, any bill would need to find favor not just with the Freedom Caucus, but also with more moderate Republicans. It would also need to attract the support of nearly every Republican in the Senate to become law.

The ability to opt out of the benefit requirements could substantially reduce the value of insurance on the market. A patient with cancer might, for example, still be allowed to buy a plan, but it wouldn’t do her much good if that plan was not required to cover chemotherapy drugs.

The second opt-out would make the insurance options for those with pre-existing conditions even more meaningless.

Technically, the deal would still prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with a history of illness. But without community rating, health plans would be free to charge those patients as much as they wanted. If both of the Obamacare provisions went away, the hypothetical cancer patient might be able to buy only a plan, without chemotherapy coverage, that costs many times more than a similar plan costs a healthy customer. Only cancer patients with extraordinary financial resources and little interest in the fine print would sign up.

There is a reason that many conservatives want to do away with these provisions. Because they help people with substantial health care needs buy relatively affordable coverage, they drive up the price of insurance for people who are healthy. An insurance market that did not include cancer care — or even any cancer patients — would be one where premiums for the remaining customers were much lower. The result might be a market that is much more affordable for people with a clean bill of health. But it would become largely inaccessible to anyone who really needs help paying for medical care.

We do not have to speculate to know what the world looks like without essential health benefits and community rating. It was how most state insurance markets worked before Obamacare. Back in 2009, most sick people who did not get insurance through work or a government program were excluded from coverage if they had a history of health problems like allergies or arthritis. Plans that did not cover pregnancy care or drug addiction treatment were widespread. (The data about individual market insurance premiums is a little spotty, but it appears that they were substantially lower in most states.)

One idea Republicans have about how to care for the sick was also in effect pre-Obamacare. Many states had “high-risk pools,” where people shut out of the traditional insurance markets could buy special plans with the help of state subsidies. The Freedom Caucus proposal is likely to include some money that states could use to set up such pools. “The fundamental idea is that marginally sick people would pay with risk associated with their coverage,” Mr. Meadows said Monday. “Those that have, you know, premiums that would be driven up because of catastrophic illness or long-term illnesses, we’ve been dealing with that for a long time with high-risk pools.”

But insurance in the old high-risk pools tended to be expensive, and often came with long waiting periods or benefit limitations, even for the very sick.

The main difference between the policy environment in 2009 and today is that the federal government would now be offering tax credits to help healthy people buy what would probably be relatively skimpy plans. That would mean that more middle-income Americans would probably have health coverage than before the Affordable Care Act, since the combination of policies would tend to make insurance much more affordable for people who are young and healthy.

What states would choose to do with this set of options is difficult to predict. Before Obamacare, few states required community rating of health plans. And few states required insurers to cover all of the benefits deemed essential under Obamacare, though most did require a few types of treatments to be covered. State governments would face a difficult choice: either take away the requirements, and leave sick patients without insurance options, or keep them and see people unable to afford coverage under the new subsidy system.

Under Obamacare, states can already waive many of the law’s insurance rules if they can show that an alternative program would cover as many people with comprehensive coverage at a lower cost to the government. But that standard is difficult to meet. Mr. Meadows suggested that the waivers under discussion should be “very easily granted” to states.

The politics of health care in the United States have shifted since the Affordable Care Act was passed seven years ago. In recent months, the law has grown more popular, and the pre-existing conditions policy is among its best-known protections. That could create political pressure for states to keep the insurance rules, even if they are not required by law. But it is likely that at least some states might decide to eliminate them if they are made optional. Shifting norms about health insurance regulation may also affect the idea’s reception in Congress.

Mr. Meadows said that the proposal presented to the Freedom Caucus would retain the pre-existing conditions policy. But that would be true in only the most literal sense. The mix of policies could allow insurance companies to charge sick people prices that few of them could pay. And it could allow them to exclude benefits that many healthy people need when they get sick. The result could be a world where people with pre-existing conditions would struggle to buy comprehensive health insurance — just as it was before Obamacare.

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 10:05 schreef Euribob het volgende:
Dat de president van Amerika gekozen is op een platform van birtherism maakt nog niet dat het geen verschrikkelijk racistisch standpunt is om uit te dragen. Niet doen dus.

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 10:20 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Ik heb er persoonlijk geen bezwaar tegen dat zo iemand als Elzies zijn irrationele haat zo duidelijk ten toon stelt. Dit zorgt alleen maar voor duidelijkheid, denk ik.

Probleem is denk ik eerder dat mensen dan de troll gaan voeren. En dat moeten we niet doen. Negeren is een veel betere optie.

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 10:35 schreef Monolith het volgende:
De approval ratings van Trump zakken ook gestaag door:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 10:43 schreef wolfrolf het volgende:

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Leuk, maar hij wordt er niet minder president van.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op maandag 3 april 2017 22:34 schreef L3gend het volgende:
Trump heeft zijn salaris gedoneerd

twitter:

CNBC twitterde op maandag 03-04-2017 om 20:40:32 JUST IN: Trump donates his first quarter salary of $78,333 to the National Park Service, White House announces in d… https://t.co/HFTD2NX5xb reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 08:42 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Een filibuster is dan ook niet zoveel waard als hij alleen maar gebruikt mag worden als de meerderheid het er mee eens is. Na de schandalige handelswijze rondom Garland zou het de GOP sieren als ze een verzoenend gebaar maakten en een meer gematigde kandidaat voor zouden staan als handreiking en instandhouding van de filibuster.

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:22 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Heeft hij ook West Palm Beach die voor de kosten van zijn golfspelletjes moesten opdraaien gecompenseerd? (onderhand staat de onkostenteller daar al op een miljoen dollar)

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:44 schreef antiderivative het volgende:

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Heeft Obama de kosten van zijn tripjes naar Hawaii al gecompenseerd? Heeft Bush Jr. de kosten van zijn trips naar zijn ranch in Texas al gecompenseerd? Heeft Kennedy de kosten van zijn vakanties in Virginia al gecompenseerd? Die laatste gaat wat moeilijk worden wellicht...

Met andere woorden, Presidenten zijn onderweg en het is duur, who knew!?!?!

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:44 schreef antiderivative het volgende:

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Heeft Obama de kosten van zijn tripjes naar Hawaii al gecompenseerd? Heeft Bush Jr. de kosten van zijn trips naar zijn ranch in Texas al gecompenseerd? Heeft Kennedy de kosten van zijn vakanties in Virginia al gecompenseerd? Die laatste gaat wat moeilijk worden wellicht...

Met andere woorden, Presidenten zijn vaker onderweg en het is duur, who knew!?!?!

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:44 schreef antiderivative het volgende:

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Heeft Obama de kosten van zijn tripjes naar Hawaii al gecompenseerd? Heeft Bush Jr. de kosten van zijn trips naar zijn ranch in Texas al gecompenseerd? Heeft Kennedy de kosten van zijn vakanties in Virginia al gecompenseerd? Die laatste gaat wat moeilijk worden wellicht...

Met andere woorden, Presidenten zijn vaker onderweg en het is duur, who knew!?!?!

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:40 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Het is één van de gematigste kandidaten op de lijst van Trump, las ik. Zag alvast niets dat hem conservatiever zou maken dan Scalia, in wiens plaats hij komt. De democraten gaan zich het beklagen als de volgende drie jaar één van de liberale rechters vervangen moet worden...

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:44 schreef antiderivative het volgende:

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Heeft Obama de kosten van zijn tripjes naar Hawaii al gecompenseerd? Heeft Bush Jr. de kosten van zijn trips naar zijn ranch in Texas al gecompenseerd? Heeft Kennedy de kosten van zijn vakanties in Virginia al gecompenseerd? Die laatste gaat wat moeilijk worden wellicht...

Met andere woorden, Presidenten zijn vaker onderweg en het is duur, who knew!?!?!

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 14-10-2014 om 21:35:27 We pay for Obama's travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 4 april 2017 11:44 schreef antiderivative het volgende:

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Heeft Obama de kosten van zijn tripjes naar Hawaii al gecompenseerd? Heeft Bush Jr. de kosten van zijn trips naar zijn ranch in Texas al gecompenseerd? Heeft Kennedy de kosten van zijn vakanties in Virginia al gecompenseerd? Die laatste gaat wat moeilijk worden wellicht...

Met andere woorden, Presidenten zijn vaker onderweg en het is duur, who knew!?!?!