[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #335 Worstelend door het Capitool

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 00:13 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Pence en Trump dromen groot en inspireren veel mensen.

twitter:

taykuy twitterde op donderdag 06-07-2017 om 18:24:57 DOE Rick Perry at coal plant:"Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there and the demand will follow." reageer retweet

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 00:40 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Rick Perry offered a ‘little economics lesson.’ It didn’t go so well.

twitter:

taykuy twitterde op donderdag 06-07-2017 om 18:24:57 DOE Rick Perry at coal plant:"Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there and the demand will follow." reageer retweet

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that if the chamber's fledgling Republican Obamacare repeal effort falls short, Congress will have to pass a more limited bill to shore up health insurance markets.

"If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur," McConnell said at a Rotary Club luncheon in Glasgow, Ky., the Associated Press reported. "No action is not an alternative. ... We've got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state."

A bill to strengthen the insurance markets would presumably need Democratic support to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. McConnell in the past has warned fractious GOP lawmakers that if the Republican-only repeal effort failed, he would be forced to work with top Democrat Chuck Schumer on legislation that conservatives would likely oppose much more than the GOP repeal bill. He repeated that after a White House meeting with the president last week.

The remarks could be aimed at Senate conservatives who argue the bill doesn't repeal enough of the health care law and contend that Republican leaders are turning their back on their eight-year-old campaign pledge to do away with the Affordable Care Act. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have proposed an amendment to allow insurance companies that sell Obamacare plans to also sell non-Obamacare plans, an idea that health care experts say would tank the markets.

Thursday's comments came after McConnell canceled a planned vote before the July Fourth recess on a repeal bill after it became clear it wouldn’t get support from 50 of the 52 Senate Republicans. McConnell and GOP leaders are redrafting their legislation with hopes of passing it before the August recess.

Several Republicans have come out against the Senate plan, including the conservatives. Moderate Republicans oppose it, too, arguing it would harm people with existing coverage or with pre-existing conditions.

Indeed, McConnell's remarks Thursday are a far cry from his own rhetoric. In his contentious 2014 reelection campaign, McConnell repeatedly promised that he and Republicans would repeal Obamacare "root and branch."

After McConnell raised the prospect of working on the insurance markets, his Democratic counterpart said he's ready to start talking.

“It’s encouraging that Sen. McConnell today acknowledged that the issues with the exchanges are fixable, and opened the door to bipartisan solutions to improve our health care system," Schumer said in a statement. "As we’ve said time and time again, Democrats are eager to work with Republicans to stabilize the markets and improve the law. At the top of the list should be ensuring cost-sharing payments are permanent, which will protect health care for millions.”

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Op donderdag 6 juli 2017 21:20 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Wat, Mevr Merkel heeft een speech gehouden?

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 07:52 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Sinds wanneer is anti-homohuwelijk Merkel de leider van de vrije wereld?

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 00:17 schreef Nintex het volgende:

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Het begint al met dingen als:
"There are threats but we will defeat them"

Mindset is heel belangrijk. Het eeuwige geleuter over 'crisis' werkt niet. Trump is met sheer force of will president geworden: "I'm going to win, we're going to win", "We're going to win this state!"

Dat is precies wat Churchill / Kennedy ook veelvuldig gebruikte. De boekhouders en bureaucraten zijn leuk, maar je wint er soms letterlijk geen oorlogen mee.

Obama trouwens net zo in zijn eerste campagne: "Yes we can!"

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:07 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Sinds Trump de complete wereld van zich aan het vervreemden is, met uitzondering van de leiders van S-A, Egypte, Polen en de Filipijnen.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Oh. Dus de keuze is enkel tussen Trump en Merkel?


Erg apart dat liberalen en linksen de religieuze en discriminerende Merkel als leider van de vrije wereld zien. Hoe laag ze zijn gezakt de afgelopen decennia, puur en alleen om het multicultureel fabeltje in stand te houden. Migratiepolitiek lijkt echt de enige criteria te zijn om te bepalen of je "vrij" bent of niet. Al het andere kan in de stront zakken.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Oh. Dus de keuze is enkel tussen Trump en Merkel?

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:
Erg apart dat liberalen en linksen de religieuze en discriminerende Merkel als leider van de vrije wereld zien. Hoe laag ze zijn gezakt de afgelopen decennia, puur en alleen om het multicultureel fabeltje in stand te houden. Migratiepolitiek lijkt echt de enige criteria te zijn om te bepalen of je "vrij" bent of niet. Al het andere kan in de stront zakken.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Oh. Dus de keuze is enkel tussen Trump en Merkel?


Erg apart dat liberalen en linksen de religieuze en discriminerende Merkel als leider van de vrije wereld zien. Hoe laag ze zijn gezakt de afgelopen decennia, puur en alleen om het multicultureel fabeltje in stand te houden. Migratiepolitiek lijkt echt de enige criteria te zijn om te bepalen of je "vrij" bent of niet. Al het andere kan in de stront zakken.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 00:23 schreef Puddington het volgende:

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Nou ja, hij inspireert me wel om nooit zo'n seniele oude zak te worden op die leeftijd, als je dat bedoelt...

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Oh. Dus de keuze is enkel tussen Trump en Merkel?


Erg apart dat liberalen en linksen de religieuze en discriminerende Merkel als leider van de vrije wereld zien. Hoe laag ze zijn gezakt de afgelopen decennia, puur en alleen om het multicultureel fabeltje in stand te houden. Migratiepolitiek lijkt echt de enige criteria te zijn om te bepalen of je "vrij" bent of niet. Al het andere kan in de stront zakken.

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As far as Trump’s bragging goes, the reality is that Germany and other nations have been increasing defense spending in recent years, but not because of anything Trump has said or done. The growing spending in Europe is a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the destabilizing and menacing policies it has adopted in the past five years, such as its own surge in defense spending; its revamping of conventional forces; its blatant violation of the 1987 INF Treaty by deploying a missile specifically banned by the treaty; its modernization of strategic nuclear forces on land and at sea; its dangerous intentional challenges to NATO operations at sea, on land and in the air; and, of course, its interference in democratic elections in the United States, France and others in Europe. It is this rising Russian threat across the board that led to increases in defense spending, and those increases started well before Trump even became a candidate for president.

The real danger on the horizon is that Trump’s diplomacy of brag and bash is starting to take a toll on U.S. long-term security, as these repeated assaults on allies during these past six months are weakening bonds of friendship and trust that took decades to build in countries like Germany and South Korea.

Trump officials might think disrupting the status quo is a political plus. But this disruption diplomacy has reached dangerous proportions, and it reflects a fundamental lack of knowledge about what makes the United States so powerful and gives that power long-term stability. American global leadership has been so successful these past 70 years because it is based on worldwide alliances that are voluntary, alliances that are more stable than the empires created by the United Kingdom or Rome because they are not based on invasion, colonization or bribery. One of the incalculable advantages the United States now has in power politics is a result of alliances and basing rights that allow U.S. forces to be deployed all over the world—a capability China and Russia can only imagine.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 07:52 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

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Sinds wanneer is anti-homohuwelijk Merkel de leider van de vrije wereld?

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 08:07 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Sinds Trump de complete wereld van zich aan het vervreemden is, met uitzondering van de leiders van S-A, Egypte, Polen en de Filipijnen.

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 10:40 schreef Eficaz het volgende:

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Ja, sinds wanneer?

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Op vrijdag 7 juli 2017 10:42 schreef Eficaz het volgende:

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En Israël

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The Republican Backlash Against Trump's Vote-Fraud Commission
GOP secretaries of state have pushed back on a request for voter data, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff says it could endanger national security.

Republicans officials and officeholders were, for the most part, not pleased about the rise of Donald Trump as their party’s candidate, but they found themselves powerless to stop his winning the nomination and then the presidency.

Since Trump became president, however, Republicans have become some of his most effective antagonists, stymieing a range of efforts. House members defeated a first attempt at repealing Obamacare; a Senate bill to do the same is looking precarious. (Democrats, although unified in opposition, have played no real role.) Congress has pursued an investigation into Russian interference Trump dislikes, and may strengthen sanctions he wants to lift. And now Republicans are posing a serious challenge to Trump’s ballyhooed election-fraud commission.

But first, let’s back up a step. The board has always looked like a cynical ploy. Stung by his failure to win the popular vote, even as the electoral college gave him the presidency, Trump has insisted that there were 3 to 5 million votes cast by ineligible voters during the presidential election. This number seems to be based on wildly speculative figures produced by an activist named Gregg Phillips.

A clique of conservatives has been warning for years that elections are irreparably tainted by vote fraud, but repeated investigations have failed to turn up meaningful numbers of fraudulent votes. Meanwhile, the laws that many states have passed, requiring photo ID to vote, making it harder to register and vote, and other changes, have disproportionately made it harder for minorities as well as student and the elderly—all Democratic constituencies—to vote. Some federal courts have even ruled that disenfranchising minorities is the goal of such laws.

Caught making baseless claims, Trump announced he would impanel a commission to investigate voter fraud. (This is a favorite move for the president: When he was caught making a baseless claim that Barack Obama had surveilled him, he demanded that intelligence agencies and Congress investigate his flight of fancy, then said the truth would only come out once those inquiries were completed.) The de facto leader of the commission is Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and one of the most outspoken and successful proponents of the claim of widespread voter fraud.

At the end of June, Kobach made his first big move, requesting all publicly available voter data from the states, including names, addresses, voting history, party affiliation, felony convictions, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. That’s in keeping with Kobach’s Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which has sought to create a database of registered voters across the entire country.

Unsurprisingly, several Democratic state secretaries of state (or their equivalents) immediately rejected the request. More interesting was the response by Republicans officials at the state level. A number of them have also rejected the request either in part or in full, citing taxpayer costs, privacy intrusions, or the fact that they doubt Kobach’s request can do much to stop fraud.

The most colorful response came from Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican.

“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from,” he said in a statement. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our State’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”

Other officials said that they were not legally permitted to disclose the data the commission requested. Maryland Secretary of State Luis Borunda, a member of the commission, resigned from the group without explanation. Ari Berman, a progressive journalist who covers voting issues closely, found that 45 states had rejected the request in part or in full.

That prompted a sharp statement from Kobach, issued through the White House press office, on Wednesday:
"In all, 36 states have either agreed or are considering participating with the Commission's work to ensure the integrity of the American electoral system. While there are news reports that 44 states have "refused" to provide voter information to the Commission, these reports are patently false, more "fake news". At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have refused the Commission's request for publicly available voter information."

Kobach has a point, as far as it goes: Some states have agreed to provide that portion of the information that Kobach requested which is actually publicly available. But then again, that information is already publicly available. North Carolina’s elections board, for example, made clear that it was releasing information because it was legally obligated to do so, and added that everything it was releasing was already available on its website. (In a moment of unintentional humor, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had to inform election-panel co-chair Kris Kobach that this state would not hand over Social Security numbers.)

Meanwhile, Michael Chertoff, a Republican who served as secretary of homeland security in the Bush administration, wrote in a Washington Post column on Thursday that Kobach’s attempt to gather so much personal information constitutes a grave threat to national security, because such a database would be vulnerable to hacking. The overall effect has been that Republican officials are creating a major obstacle to the Kobach commission putting together the database it sought.

That shouldn’t pose much of a danger to electoral integrity, though. If there were actually millions of ineligible voters casting ballots, it would have been detected before. A painstaking 2007 Department of Justice search failed to turn it up, as have other investigations. (Philip Bump illustrated the physical implausibility of these claims in October, too.) In-person voter fraud is extremely rare, yet voter-ID laws and databases like Interstate Crosscheck continue to focus on rooting it out. But simply matching names tends to turn up false positives. That’s something Kobach encountered in Kansas: After he dramatically announced that there were nearly 2,000 dead voters on state rolls, newspapers starting finding the alleged dead voters alive and well. Similar names often produce false positive results for fraudulent or duplicative registrations.

Yet that’s precisely what Kobach intended to do with the information he collected for the panel, as Jessica Huseman confirmed: The idea is to run the names collected against federal databases to try to find improper registrations. That would likely produce a raft of false positives; some would be successfully challenged, but other eligible voters might see their registrations erroneously thrown out. Given the history of voter-ID laws and Kobach’s results with previous databases, the cynics can be forgiven for suspecting that was the goal all along.