That's where the people are, dude. Separating California as some arbitrary unit that should be considered separate (and potentially left out to consider or achieve some certain result) is absurd.

I don't really get the anti-California sentiment. It is an American state, whether you like it or not, so imagining what it'd be like if it wasn't is just plain unpatriotic IMO. I think that Republicans are aberrations but you don't see me saying that I'd like to just saw the country in half at the Mason Dixon & push you ***** into the equator.

This is both funny and sad in light of the Republican congress' insistence on repealing the ACA. I forget if it was here or elsewhere that I read this, but a great deal of recent investment in rural healthcare comes increased demand that resulted from vastly expanding Medicaid. Take that away, and you're going to start to see many more medical tourists in urban hospitals or even clinics.

I really don't get the Republicans. They're willing to turn a blind eye to Russian interference in the election just in order to salivate over the opportunity to slash the supply of patients capable of paying doctors for their services.

I've tried to be clear about my aberration comment. I've been referring to the vote specifically in this election. Huge popular vote landslide for Clinton and next to the worst, percentage wise (but effectively the worst), for Trump.

My other statements are in response to some notion that I don't think they should get their equal representation. They got far better than equal representation in this race as the numbers clearly show from a pro-Clinton (or anti-Trump) perspective.

I think California is a beautiful state. I lived there for almost four years, central valley area. I nearly regret not purchasing a home there, could have doubled my money easy.

I can't believe anyone took my CA comment seriously.

What exactly is it that we suspect the Russian did to interfere with the election? Serious question, I don't pay much attention to fake news. Also, won't gutting Obamacare actually increase the supply of patients that pay doctors for their services?

I thought that was funny too but your humor is less obvious than mine bigly.

Which Republicans? Their voters, or party officials, ...?

Most voters (on both sides) are low information AF. Putin is this shrimpy bookish intelligence analyst white collar criminal type IRL, but the Russian state projects his image as paternalistic and rugged. That has earned him a lot of fans among conservative voters in western countries.

You'll notice the break between the left mouthpieces saying "foreign power disrupting our democracy" and the right saying "Putin did it". Because their voters don't generally mind Putin that much. The left got super antsy when Trump asked Putin (by name) to keep hacking the DNC, but he was playing the GOP base when he said that.

APT hacked the DNC intranet and key Clinton campaign personnel, and then leaking the resulting material to the press. The sophistication of the attack indicates it was a state actor. Most branches of the USG who might have an informed opinion say it was definitely the Russian government, which is consistent with Putin's personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton for her role in levelling financial sanctions against Putin's most prominent private sector supporters.

It is difficult to estimate how much impact those leaks had on her campaign. Did they get air time on Fox News? I wouldn't know, I also don't pay much attention to fake news.



Medicare fixes prices and mandates information asymmetry (meaning that you don't know how much a procedure is actually going to cost until it's done). So even if your problem isn't acute and you have time to shop around, you can't. Even though US hospitals/doctors are quote-unquote "private" there is no actual free market for healthcare in the US. Prices would stay as high as ever.

Repealing ACA individual mandate would drive down the costs of insurance because they won't be driven up by the punitive fee (see an earlier thread for my analysis of this cost). Repealing the prior conditions parts won't do **** because insurers are already extremely high margin; the present cost is constrained by (healthy) customer ability and willingness to pay, not the cost of providing that service.

So basically as far as you're concerned, if you are a healthy person who wants to get private insurance, it'll be better. Until you get sick and the insurance company fires you for using it.

Congressional Republicans. Paul Ryan referred to this session of Congress as the opportunity of a lifetime, whereas in my mind that they don't want to impeach this treasonous piece of crap just makes them hypocrites, after so much nationalistic rhetoric about projecting American power in defiance of Soviet or Russian influence. For a lot of Eastern European immigrants, the USA's role in the cold war probably represents the best part of this country that happens to be championed by conservatives, but now that they've been given a majority, they are going to throw all that out the window, however the dubious circumstances.

The Russian influence is something I find quite disturbing, but I mostly bring it up to try to illustrate the opportunistic behavior of congressional Republicans. Personally, I find that staffing cabinets with people who are ignorant about what their department's mission is to be even more problematic.

That's pretty much where I thought we were on the issue it's just that a lot of people seem to be making it out to be something different.



Probably did just like all of the other democrat scandals. I do love how this fake news thing has blown up. They've all been fake for so long and now they've been lumped in with people getting their news from memes. I treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism today.

This sort of thing isn't anything new. If Russia was involved they helped expose Democrat corruption and it would be hard for congressional Republicans not to take advantage of the situation. Somewhat similar is congressional Democrat cooperation with the Soviet Union to oppose Reagan although I think that rose to a far worse level.

But surely, you wouldn't put Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and The Huffington Post in the same category as NPR or the WSJ?

Generally speaking yes, because people have agendas no matter what organization they work for or represent. You can't take anything at face value anymore. Having said that, the organization can add some greater level of credibility that is fair to take note of but it's not a blank check now, if it ever was.

Sounds right to me. I still don't like opportunistic behavior, and frankly I think we are headed for some turbulent times. With global temperature records being broken and antibiotic resistance on the rise, I shudder at the prospect of federal departments like USGS, NASA, HHS, CDC etc. being impeded from performing their functions.

Well, let's be honest. There isn't going to be any reduction in vaccinations and there isn't anything that can be done to stop, let alone reverse, any possibly man caused climate change. Even if every conceivable course of action was taken, there would be no discernible or measurable resulting effect.

Fair enough, but you may have overlooked that I neatly partitioned the two categories into journalists and websites masquerading as journalistic organizations. I treat the websites in the Breitbart category the same way I do Mercola.com on nutrition (pennjillette.jpg).

With Trump and Fox News' perpetual attack on the credibility of the media, I can't really expect people to tell the difference, though.

:-/

ಠ_ಠ

I'm not sure that it's simply opportunism. If Trump was impeached or convicted before the inauguration, there would have been grounds to take the same action against Pence as well. Impeaching the president and the vice president would have amounted to a constitutional crisis unlike anything we've seen.

I agree that the Republicans have been obscene in their cynicism. But the alternative is also costly, and would also empower Putin by demonstrating his effectiveness.

If Trump goes, Pence should resign, just like Spiro Agnew. To avoid the constitutional crisis we might want to wait until the cabinet is filled out. Frustratingly, his cabinet is shaping up to be much worse than Trump himself, which is effectively a defense against singular attacks on Trump the man rather than Trump the administration. A reasonable successor to Trump would probably need to replace the entire cabinet.

Did I miss something? On which grounds should Trump be impeached?

He still has plenty of opportunity to break the law, but I suppose impeachment won't be the first step in legal challenges to his administration.

I don't know, though, after the Clinton trials, I guess I just assumed wrongly that the president can be impeached for whatever the **** Congress wants.

I agree. We should be sawing New Jersey off the US instead.

****ing New Jersey

So now I am reading a bit about Trump's o̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶o̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶ legal troubles, e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶ ̶U̶n̶i̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶t̶y̶ (nm), and it dawned on me that Trump could probably pardon himself in the event that that civil suit brings any violations of state and federal law to light.

--Richard Posner (2000)

I thought it was reported that Trump settled that suit.



You know, that thing about how you can impeach a president-elect. Oh, what, that's not a thing? Who knew?

You're right--I forgot that he had settled--which is why I edited my post.




AFAIK, the president can still be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors", as defined by Senate impeachment proceedings, regardless of whether or not they were committed before taking office.


— U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 4

But Eversor was talking about impeachment before the inauguration.

Oh, and then you commented that if Trump goes Pence should go and we should wait on the whole cabinet. Just how quickly do you think this Republican congress is going to impeach and convict and then we must go back and seriously consider Jon`C's last question.

Well, unless Trump really is some kind of nefarious Russian plant or is being blackmailed, my point about the cabinet was that impeaching him would be sort of a futile gesture in some ways, since it is his cabinet that is going to determine the egregious policy that I'd like to prevent.

So unless he egregiously ****s up at some point into his presidency to the point that he loses support of his own party, being stuck with him as commander-in-chief is probably the least of our worries.

Now that I think about it, though, I'll have to go and read what exactly happened to Nixon's cabinet after he resigned.

Well, not a lawyer, but I couldn't really imagine the legal basis for that, heh.

You're right. As for Jon's question, I think there is plenty of chance for him to **** up in the future. But as I responded, I'll have to concede that impeachment is probably not going to be the first (quasi-†) legal challenge to the Trump administration.

† From a cursory reading of a Quora answer from a ex-Federal law clerk, what the Senate determines to be "high crimes and misdemeanors" is largely political rather than legal.

He already doesn't have the support of his party; they all think he's out of his mind. The Republican congress would definitely move to impeach and convict if they had an excuse.

So I guess it depends on how many tied up foreign real estate developments end up getting magically resolved.

That's somewhat delusional.

I wish you weren't right, Wookie, but as far as I can tell, congressional Republicans will never hate a sitting president of their own party the way they did Bill Clinton.

violation of the emoluments clause

It actually isn't, but okay, whatever.

Bookies are giving 4:1 on Trump being impeached within 6 months.

I didn't have any context to go on, & since the anti-CA sentiment is a thing amongst many Republicans, I just assumed that the anti-CA stuff I was reading was at least semi-serious. Yes, that's me semi-apologizing.

Whether or not Trump is actually impeached, he's very likely to continue being the focus of lawsuits. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have already filed one. These sorts of lawsuits are likely to continue because his behavior & tactics aren't suddenly going to change because he has an American flag lapel pin.

I think that impeachment is far more likely if the Democrats are able to gain a decent number of seats in two years.

They hardly hated Clinton. He's just a scumbag that obstructed justice in a heinous manner. I hope if it's ever found out that Trump has done something similar, House Republicans do the same thing.



Oh, so you heard about the weak lawsuit.



I think Congress is going to need something more tangible than an excuse to risk pitchforks.

Did you switch from being unaffiliated to identifying as a Republican? Because you said "we" in response to the good Reverend not getting the Republicans, and I remember you saying in the past that you considered yourself independent rather than partisan.

Edit: looks like by "we" you meant the United States, so nevermind. I just need to read better.