Will Trump die from terminal healthcare?

The day after the Mueller report was released was like reliving Nov 8, 2016. The dark cloud and oppressing depression returned. How long was it going to last this time?

Thankfully not long.

Already Trump has declared war on eliminating the ACA before we know what’s really in the Mueller report. It may be premature to start singing “Oh Happy Day”, but you may want to start tuning up.

This post’s poll

19 thoughts on “Will Trump die from terminal healthcare?”


  1. Warren and Castro back Biden accuser – but don’t say ex-VP shouldn’t run
    Lucy Flores says then-VP kissed her at 2014 Nevada rally
    Biden denies claim as candidates questioned at Iowa event
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    Two Democratic presidential candidates expressed support on Saturday for the Nevada political candidate who has alleged former Vice-President Joe Biden kissed her on the back of her head at a rally in 2014.

    ‘AOC TMZ’: why Republicans obsess over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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    But the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and former HUD secretary Julián Castro did not say the allegation disqualified Biden from joining the Democratic primary race.

    The former vice-president has hinted strongly that he will make a third run for the White House but has not yet formally committed.

    Speaking to reporters in Iowa, Warren and Castro said they believed Lucy Flores, who wrote in New York magazine that she felt uncomfortable with her interactions with Biden. The former vice-president has been criticised before regarding his physical behaviour towards some women.

    Warren and Castro said it would be up to Biden to decide whether he should join the race.

    Biden spokesman Bill Russo said in a statement that Biden does not remember kissing Flores.

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  3. Opinion
    The $70,000-a-Year Minimum Wage
    A small Seattle company shows that capitalism can have a heart.
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    SEATTLE — Staff members gasped four years ago when Dan Price gathered the 120 employees at Gravity Payments, the company he had founded with his brother, and told them he was raising everyone’s salary to a minimum of $70,000, partly by slashing his own $1.1 million pay to the same level.

    The news went viral and provoked a national debate about whether efficient capitalism could have a heart. Some Americans lauded Price for treating employees with dignity. However, on Fox Business he was labeled the “lunatic of all lunatics,” and Rush Limbaugh declared, “I hope this company is a case study in M.B.A. programs on how socialism does not work, because it’s going to fail.”

    So I came to Seattle to see what had unfolded: Did Gravity succeed or crash?

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  4. Opinion
    Trump’s Circus Maximus
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    Was President Trump doing a “Low-Energy Jeb!” impersonation in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Thursday?CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times

    Trump engaged in his usual weird meandering, saying of his voters: “I always say they came from the valleys. They came from the mountains, they came out of the damn rivers. I don’t know what you were doing in the river, but they came from the cities, they came and they came and they didn’t even know.”

    …and it went down from there

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  5. Politics
    With social program fights, some Republicans fear being seen as the party of the 1 percent

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    On Capitol Hill, “the reaction is: Make my day,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore). “Democrats swept the midterms based on health care, among other key issues. The president is helping us make our case.”

    “He has a penchant for distracting from the news — good or bad, apparently,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said. “This presidency is the most disorganized that I’ve seen — most self-destructive and most impulsive.”

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  6. Podcast – The Argument
    Who Botched the Mueller Report?
    And should we abolish the Electoral College?
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    A majority of folks on the left, me especially, were taken for a bit of a ride by the liberal media’s coverage of the Mueller report. Admittedly it was so easy and compelling to get sucked into the hype that no one should feel guilty for going along. But, facts are sticky things and even before the Mueller report it’s obvious what we were hoping for turns out to be somewhat irrational. This doesn’t mean you need to feel bad about it, but it should serve as a lesson to always be skeptical when the news seems too good to be true.

    Luckily Trump has taken a lot of the edge off with his latest faux pas of trying to end Obamacare. Still we should be prepared to defend the need and validity of the Mueller report with the 2 points David Corn pointed out in his “Here’s the Real Trump-Russia Hoax” piece above.

    Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | RadioPublic | Stitcher

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  7. Podcasting’s Netflix moment: the global battle for domination
    With huge audience growth forecast, the race is on to lead podcast distribution
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    Podcasting is experiencing a Netflix moment. Global hits – from the ground-breaking Serial to Up and Vanished, and TV crossovers such as Dirty John – and Spotify’s plan to spend up to $500m on leading producers have made podcasts a hot media property.

    Global monthly podcast listener figures are forecast to grow more than six-fold, from 287 million in 2016 to 1.85 billion in 2023, according to the Ovum research company Ovum. In the UK, Ofcom says that nearly 6 million people tune into a podcast each week, double the number of five years ago.

    “A Netflix moment is a very accurate characterisation of what is happening in podcasting,” says Hernan Lopez, the founder of the podcast studio Wondery, maker of hits including Dr Death and Over My Dead Body. “I would say we are reaching an inflection point. Huge numbers of people are realising that there is great content available that isn’t offered by traditional players.”

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  8. Here’s the Real Trump-Russia Hoax
    It’s Trump defenders and lefty Russiagate skeptics claiming there is no scandal.
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    Two fundamental facts were established long before Mueller completed his investigation. First, the Russians attacked an American election in order to sow chaos, hurt Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump. Second, Trump and his top advisers during the campaign repeatedly denied this attack was underway, echoing and amplifying Moscow disinformation (the false claim that Russia was not attacking). Whether or not the Trumpers were directly in cahoots with the Russian government, they ran interference for Vladimir Putin’s assault on the United States, and they even did so after the intelligence community had briefed Trump on Russia’s culpability.

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  9. Why Do We Love to Hate James Comey?
    He’s the most annoying good man in America.
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    During this hyper partisan time, it’s hard to find something—anything—that unifies both the right and the left, that bridges the divide between Fox News loving MAGA hat wearers and the educated elites who still read the failing New York Times by the millions. But Jim Comey is here to help. He’s a uniter, not a divider.

    Comey is an amazing figure. A public servant. A Boy Scout. An inspirational thought leader. Perhaps the tallest man in America not known primarily because of his height. So why is it that dunking on Comey is such a beloved, bipartisan sport?

    Let us stipulate to the fact that Comey is a good man and a fine human being. In a political climate of sin, where the leader of the free world is a thrice-married adulterer who paid off a porn star whom he was sexing while his (latest) wife was recovering from childbirth, this is no longer a given. And we should appreciate Comey for it.

    Comey has six children, all with the same woman. He has been married to his wife since roughly the Pliocene epoch and in his spare time they serve as emergency foster parents for homeless kids. No, really. He explained to NPR that, as foster parents, they often get more love out of these relationships than they put into them, even. “Little boy who came to us born a month premature in a homeless shelter to a drug-addicted mother and born in very very difficult circumstances so we got him right out of the hospital,” Comey said of one of his many foster children. That baby boy was later adopted, but, as NPR reports, the Comeys still watch him a couple times a week. “[W]e’ve stayed very close,” Comey said. “We’ll look after him his whole life.”

    As I said: A good man. A fine human being.

    But good people can still be annoying as fuck and James Comey is proof of this.

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  12. Morning Mix
    ‘Clearly an end-run’: Federal judge rejects Trump’s health care plan to go around Obamacare

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    A federal judge in Washington ruled late Thursday that the Trump administration’s push to make health insurance plans available outside the Affordable Care Act that avoid the requirements of the health care law was illegal, calling the efforts “clearly an end-run around the ACA.”

    The 43-page ruling, submitted by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of the District of Columbia, blocks new rules from the Trump administration overseeing “association health plans,” which would allow small businesses to combine their forces to offer less expensive plans outside the ACA that would be both less expensive and provide fewer health protections.

    “The final rule is clearly an end-run around the ACA,” Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote in the Thursday ruling. “Indeed, as the president directed, and the secretary of labor confirmed, the final rule was designed to expand access to AHPs to avoid the most stringent requirements of the ACA.”

    Read more (pdf)

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  13. Can What We Eat Affect How We Feel?
    Nutritional psychiatrists counsel patients on how better eating may be another tool in helping to ease depression and anxiety and may lead to better mental health.
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    The irony, he says, is that most Americans are overfed in calories yet starved of the vital array of micronutrients that our brains need, many of which are found in common plant foods. A survey published in 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only one in 10 adults meets the minimal daily federal recommendations for fruit and vegetables — at least one-and-a-half to two cups per day of fruit and two to three cups per day of vegetables.

    Read more (pdf)

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  14. From the Not In My Backyard department
    San Franciscans raise $46,000 to stop homeless shelter in wealthy area

    Another campaign in support of the shelter launched Thursday and received a $5,000 donation from GoFundMe itself
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    Residents from one of San Francisco’s most desirable neighborhoods are taking a controversial approach to blocking a new homeless shelter: launching a crowdfunding appeal.

    Their campaign on GoFundMe – best known as a site that hosts fundraisers for medical expenses or victims of natural disasters – has prompted an angry response from the city’s mayor.

    It has drawn more than $46,000 dollars, nearly half of its stated $100,000 goal. The money is to go to a local attorney working on behalf of the residents, and its 91 donors include an anonymous contributor who gave $10,000, along with hedge fund managers, executives and authors.

    A rival GoFundMe in support of the proposed shelter was launched on Thursday, and quickly received a $5,000 donation from GoFundMe itself.

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  15. Will Rachel Maddow face a reckoning over her Trump-Russia coverage?
    With Trump has come two years of conspiracy-mongering about Russia – and at the top of the heap is none other than MSNBC’s Maddow
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    Still, it’s abundantly clear now that many liberal outlets overdid it in their fervor. And Maddow, MSNBC’s ratings juggernaut of the Trump era, is the embodiment of this overzealousness. The Mueller investigation was covered more on MSBNC than any other television network, and was mentioned virtually every day in 2018. No twist was too minuscule or outlandish for Maddow; every night, seemingly, brought another nail in the coffin of the soon-to-be-dead Trump presidency.

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    As I’ve said before, she lost me when she suddenly dropped opening her shows with reports from Afghanistan and Iraq in the height of the battles. I could think of no other reason than she was bending to the will of the network owners.

    Personally, I think she’d do better returning to her roots as a contributor/commenter which is how she launched her career on Air America Radio. She’s too intensive, repetitive and teasing for an hour long show for my taste. If you watch her for any period of time you realize the big pitch at the top of the show will be strung out until the last segment.

    She has a gift for communicating effectively but she’s not afraid to use it for ratings and increase ad revenues for the network. The show with David Cay Johnston where she teased Trump’s tax returns for 50 minutes only to produce a lesser tax form was the straw for me. Sure it is fun to watch but to have to endure 50 minutes of infotainment to get 5 minutes of hard news is time I’m not willing to spend.

    Addendum: The Associated Press reported Nielsen ratings showing Maddow’s audience on Monday, March 25, was down 19 percent from her average, and it slipped a little further on Tuesday.

    Meanwhile, Fox News’ Sean Hannity saw his audience shoot up 32 percent Monday. Generally, Fox News shows beat their average performance, as their CNN and MSNBC counterparts “plunged,” as the Associated Press put it.

  18. Opinion
    A Dummy’s Guide to Democratic Policy Proposals
    Democrats are offering up a litany of exciting big ideas. Let’s take a look.
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    We in the news media often whack politicians for not being serious about policy. And then we ignore their policy proposals.

    So here, in the spirit of orgiastic wonkishness, is my Dummy’s Guide to Democratic Policy Proposals. I write it because something fascinating is underway: After decades of incrementalism, Democrats are now proposing a litany of exciting big ideas.

    Here’s my take:

    Read more (pdf)

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  19. Opinion
    People Actually Like the Green New Deal
    Mitch McConnell’s show vote in the Senate on Tuesday rejected the plan, but Republicans may come to regret their mockery.
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    The core challenge the Green New Deal faces is not so much on the merits of the concept or even its political feasibility; it is that many of its Democratic supporters have met an aggressive and one-sided onslaught from the right with very little by way of response.

    Read more (pdf)

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