President Donald Trump

**Humbert** · 19-12-2016, 05:35 AM

Originally Posted by redhaze

Originally Posted by Humbert

I guess you're feeling cheated.

Do you think that my wife and I paying $820 a month for insurance we can't use is reasonable or fair? Honest question.

How much would you think is fair? When I paid $450 a month 25 years ago I never questioned whether it was fair. If a catastrophe happens you will not be worrying about what is fair, you will be damn glad you are covered. It was and is how insurance works. Is it fair that the public has to pay for skyrocketing healthcare costs at all?

**redhaze** · 19-12-2016, 05:40 AM

Originally Posted by Humbert

When I paid $450 a month 25 years ago I never questioned whether it was fair.

Originally Posted by Humbert

It was and is how insurance works.

I don't know what kind of crazy ass plan you were on, but 25 years ago that would have been an absolutely absurd price for insurance (you don't say whether it was for a couple or not, either way it was too much). I bet you it covered a fair few things more than a $16,000 dollar deductible.

Its also apples to oranges in other important ways, you had other options, and (this is critical) you weren't being FORCED to pay anything. That is a pretty important distinction.

Originally Posted by Humbert

How much would you think is fair?

$810 a month is a small mortgage.

To answer your question: Much less.

Originally Posted by Humbert

It was and is how insurance works.

Being forced to buy unaffordable insurance from a private company with a monopoly and a captive market was never, ever how it worked.

**Humbert** · 19-12-2016, 05:47 AM

Originally Posted by redhaze

I don't know what kind of crazy ass plan you were on, but 25 years ago you were getting robbed if you were really paying that much (you don't say whether it was for a couple or not, either way it was too much).

I had a choice of plans and I chose an expensive option. It was for a family of four. The expense didn't bother me because I was earning $17,000 per month.

Originally Posted by redhaze

Its also apples to oranges, you had other options, and (this is critical) you weren't being FORCED to pay anything

It's true but I wouldn't have dreamed of not having insurance. Look, I sympathize. I think the healthcare system stinks but what can you do? What will you do if the ACA is repealed? Will you just not buy insurance? It doesn't look like the costs will come down under any system except a single payer system and that will mean higher taxes.

**redhaze** · 19-12-2016, 05:55 AM

Originally Posted by Humbert

What will you do if the ACA is repealed? Will you just not buy insurance?

If it were repealed I would try and look at a catastophic plan (those were made illegal under the ACA, but make perfect sense for people in their 30's in good health). Honestly, I don't even know what the difference is between the plan I'm being offered at $410 and catastrophic anyways. Apparently I'm entitled to a free physical every year under ACA

Before the ACA, catastrophic plans went for around $75 a month. My brother (two years younger than me) had one through Blue Cross for $45 a month

**Humbert** · 19-12-2016, 06:06 AM

^Probably a good choice. Doesn't the company you work for have health plans?

**redhaze** · 19-12-2016, 06:09 AM

I'm self employed

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 11:09 AM

More on the new cabinet.
Tillerson

Leak reveals Rex Tillerson was director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil firm
Documents from tax haven will raise more questions over suitability of Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of state

Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, was the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.

Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.

The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3m files given to the Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.

Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee. Exxon said on Sunday that Tillerson was no longer a director after becoming the company’s CEO in 2006.

ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.

Tillerson’s critics say he is too close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that his appointment could raise potential conflicts of interest.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest oil company and has for a long time been eyeing Russia’s vast oil and gas deposits. Tillerson currently has Exxon stock worth more than $200m.

Since his nomination, Tillerson’s Russia ties have become a source of bipartisan concern. In 2013, Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Friendship. Tillerson is close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian state oil company Rosneft and the de facto second most powerful figure inside the Kremlin. A hardliner, Sechin is ex-KGB.

Tillerson’s award followed a 2011 deal between ExxonMobil and Rosneft to explore the Kara Sea, in Russia’s Arctic.

It was put on hold in 2014 after the Obama administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia. The sanctions were punishment for Putin’s Crimea annexation that spring and Russia’s undercover invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The ban covers the US sharing of sophisticated offshore and shale oil technology. Exxon was supposed to halt its drilling with Rosneft. The firm successfully pleaded with the US Treasury department to delay the ban by a few weeks, with the Kremlin threatening to seize its rig. In this brief window Exxon discovered a major Arctic field with some 750m barrels of new oil.

Tillerson has criticised the US government’s policy on Russia. In 2014 he told Exxon’s annual meeting that “we do not support sanctions”. He added: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who they are really harming.”

It is widely assumed by investors that the new Trump administration will drop sanctions. This would allow the Kara joint venture to resume, boosting Exxon’s share price and yielding potential profits in the tens of billions of dollars. According to company records, Tillerson currently owns $218m of stock. His Exxon pension is worth about $70m.

Vladimir Putin awarded Rex Tillerson the Russian Order of Friendship. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/Tass
The Senate foreign relations committee is currently split 10 to 9 between Republicans and Democrats. But several heavyweight Republicans, including John McCain, have raised doubts about Tillerson’s nomination and his lack of experience to be America’s top diplomat after four decades spent exclusively in the oil industry.

Republican senator Marco Rubio – who sits on the committee – said on Tuesday that he had “serious concerns” about giving Tillerson the job. Rubio praised him as a “respected businessman” but said that the next secretary of state “must be someone who views the world with moral clarity [and who] has a clear sense of America’s interests”.

Tillerson is likely to get rid of his Exxon stock if the narrowly Republican-majority Senate confirms his appointment.

Controversy over his links with Russia comes at a time when the topic is politically red hot, after the CIA said earlier this month that Kremlin hackers had stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and top Democrats in order to help Trump. The president-elect has dismissed the CIA’s assessment, calling it “ridiculous”. The Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, says Putin targeted her for reasons of personal revenge.

As well as on oil and gas, the Obama administration has imposed personal sanctions on Putin’s friends, including Sechin. Sechin has said that one of his ambitions is to “ride the roads in the United States on motorcycles with Tillerson”. Currently, Sechin is forbidden from entering the country.

This new revelation about Tillerson’s directorship sheds light on the use by multinational companies of contrived offshore structures, now under scrutiny following April’s massive Panama Papers leak.

Exxon Neftegas’s most important oil and gas project is Sakhalin-1. It is located in the sub-Arctic, off the frozen and difficult-to-access north-east coast of Russia’s Sakhalin island. This is 10,700km (6,650 miles) away from the subsidiary’s official business home in Nassau, the semi-tropical capital of the Bahamas. The Bahamas is notorious for secrecy and has a corporate tax rate of zero.

The documents from the Bahamas corporate registry were shared by Süddeutsche Zeitung with the Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington DC. They show that Exxon registered at least 67 companies in the secretive tax haven, covering operations in countries from Russia to Venezuela to Azerbaijan.

Exxon Neftegas features in about 25 leaked offshore documents. The oil firm was incorporated in 1998 by a law firm in Nassau, Higgs & Johnson. Another veteran law firm, Lobosky Management Ltd, subsequently took over as registered agent. The company secretary, Sophia Kishinevsky, signed the paperwork and made annual filings.

Exxon said it had no comment on whether Tillerson should now divest his Exxon holdings and resign from his positions with all Exxon entities. It said the oil firm had incorporated some of its affiliates in the Bahamas because of “simplicity and predictability”.

“It is not done to reduce tax in the country where the company operates,” Exxon said. “Incorporation of a company in the Bahamas does not decrease ExxonMobil’s tax liability in the country where the entity generates its income.”

The firm was one of the largest taxpayers in the world, with an effective global tax rate in 2015 of 34%, it said. Its effective tax rate over the past three years – 2013, 2014, 2015 – was 43%, it added. This compared favourably with other Fortune 100 companies, which “have substantially lower effective tax rates than ExxonMobil”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...an-oil-company

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 11:38 AM

Trump facing senate backlash over cabinet of billionaires.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump used a “thank-you” rally in Des Moines, Iowa, to give his supporters further insight into the “deal-making” team he intends to build in Washington. As president-elect, Trump has so far nominated a number of billionaires, three Goldman Sachs bankers and the chief executive of the world’s largest oil firm to senior positions. Responding to liberal consternation at the sheer wealth of the prospective appointees, Trump told his audience: “A newspaper [the New York Times] criticised me and said: ‘Why can’t they have people of modest means?’ Because I want people that made a fortune. Because now they are negotiating for you, OK? It’s no different than a great baseball player or a great golfer.”

Trump’s cabinet, which is not yet fully filled, is already said to be worth a combined $14bn – the richest White House top table ever assembled. His team – if all are confirmed by the Senate – will be worth 50 times the $250m combined wealth of George W Bush’s first cabinet, which the media at the time dubbed the “team of millionaires”. For Trump, those figures are simply a confirmation of competence: in Trumpian politics, the richer you are, the better you must be at cutting a deal. And “deal-making” is what the next White House will be all about.

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly returned to the theme of the “terrible deals” cut by previous administrations, from the North American Free Trade Agreement trade deal to the nuclear deal with Iran.

He described the Nafta with Canada and Mexico as “the worst trade deal maybe ever”; the Iran nuclear pact was a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated”, and would be “ripped up”. China, was a “big abuser” through artificially depressing its currency to give its exports a boost at the expense of US jobs. The implication was that, under the leadership of Trump, America Inc would finally begin to punch its weight in the market of global diplomacy.

According to Peter Henning, a constitutional law professor at Wayne State University, appointing business leaders to top political positions has become the norm in American politics, but Trump’s nominations were “unique in the volume of people with minimal, if any, government experience”.

“I am always wary of people who say ‘we have to run the country like a business’ – businesses aren’t responsible for defence or caring for the elderly,” he said. “Businesses are driven with one guiding principle – to make the most money – and that should not be the role of the government.”

The backlash has begun in earnest. The criticism Trump objected to in Des Moines came from a New York Times editorial questioning the Trump administration’s seeming lack of interest in vetting nominees for potential conflicts of interest. Top Democrats and leading ethics and constitutional law experts have also raised concerns about Trump’s selection process.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who campaigned for the Democratic nomination and promised that, if elected, he would redistribute the vast wealth of the 1% to poorer families, has dubbed Trump’s top team the “cabinet of billionaires”.

“I guess they have a few poor millionaires on it but, mostly, it is billionaires,” Sanders said. He accused Trump of going back on his pledge to lead an anti-establishment revolution and “drain the swamp”. “If the cabinet he appointed of billionaires and millionaires is anti-establishment, boy, I would hate to see what the ‘establishment’ looks like,” Sanders said on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. “Maybe I am not seeing something here, but you don’t appoint the head of ExxonMobil to be secretary of state. That is not quite taking on the establishment.”

It is the selection of Exxon’s chief executive, Rex Tillerson, whom Trump described as “one of the truly great business leaders of the world” in an early morning tweet announcing his appointment as secretary of state, that has caused the most upset on both sides of the aisle.

Who is Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson?
As well as a phalanx of Democrats, leading Republican senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, and John McCain, the chairman of the Senate armed services committee, have raised concerns about Tillerson’s close relationship with Vladimir Putin and conflicts of interest arising from Exxon’s interests in Russia.

Tillerson, 64, who has spent his whole career at the oil giant, was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship in 2013 after he agreed a deal with the state-owned oil company Rosneft, run by Putin lieutenant Igor Sechin.

The partnership to drill for oil in the Arctic and explore in Siberia and the Black Sea was iced following the imposition of sanctions on Russia when it annexed Crimea. It means that Exxon has tens of billions of potential Russian assets lying idle. Tillerson has $245m of Exxon stock.

As secretary of state, Tillerson will be leading discussions on whether the US should maintain sanctions against Russia. He will also be forming America’s policy on the Syria crisis, the Iran nuclear deal (which Trump has described as “terrible”), and relations with North Korea.

“When he gets the friendship award from a butcher, frankly, it’s an issue that I think needs to be examined,” McCain told Fox News.

Rubio, who serves on the foreign relations committee that will vet Tillerson’s nomination before a full Senate vote, has said he has “serious concerns” about the appointment. “The next secretary of state must be someone who views the world with moral clarity, is free of potential conflicts of interest, has a clear sense of America’s interests, and will be a forceful advocate for America’s foreign policy goals to the president, within the administration, and on the world stage,” he said.

In its most recent session, the foreign relations committee was composed of 10 Republicans and nine Democrats, meaning that if Trump lost one Republican, Tillerson’s appointment could be at least stalled.

Other controversial big business appointments include Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs’s president and chief operating officer, named as director of the National Economic Council – or, as Trump put it, his “top economic adviser”.

Trump said Cohn, who has worked at Goldman for 26 years and amassed some $200m of the bank’s stock, would “put his talents as a highly successful businessman to work for the American people”.

“He will help craft economic policies that will grow wages for our workers, stop the exodus of jobs overseas and create many great new opportunities for Americans who have been struggling.”

Goldman Sachs president and chief Gary Cohn has been named as Trump’s ‘top economic advisor’.

Cohn’s appointment does not require Senate approval, and could serve as a stepping stone to other government positions at the Treasury or the Federal Reserve, a route that has been well trodden in the past.

Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, is also a multimillionaire former Goldman banker who went on to be dubbed a “foreclosure king” for buying up distressed mortgages and evicting thousands of homeowners during the financial crisis.

Analysis Donald Trump's talk of 'draining the swamp' rings hollow
A selection of Goldman Sachs brass past and present as well as some unqualified (and wealthy) nominees leaves one to wonder how long his honeymoon with his working-class constituency will last

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democratic senator, called Mnuchin “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis” because he “managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street” during his lengthy career.

“His selection as treasury secretary should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis, and is the latest sign that Donald Trump has no intention of draining the swamp and every intention of running Washington to benefit himself and his rich buddies,” she said.

The selection of three Goldman bankers could open Trump up to criticism as, during the campaign, the president-elect repeatedly highlighted the bank as emblematic of the corrupt global elite that had stolen the futures of hard-working Americans.

Days before the election, Trump launched a TV advert that portrayed the Goldman chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein as the personification of the global elite, which he said had “robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities”. Trump’s ire against Goldman persisted throughout the campaign: he attacked Hillary Clinton for giving paid speeches to the bank and accused his Republican nomination rival Ted Cruz of being “owned” by Goldman because his wife worked at the bank. “He will do anything they demand. Not much of a reformer!” Trump said in a January tweet.

But beyond the accusations of brazen hypocrisy, it is the enmeshing of business interests with affairs of state which is causing the deepest concern.

Jordan Libowitz, of the DC watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump’s cabinet had the potential for the most conflicts of interest ever. “There have been business leaders, and very rich ones, in the cabinet in the past but never of this depth and scale. The question is not whether he is seeking to run the White House like a business, but more whether he will be running it as his business. People will question whether the provocative actions he has taken so far are in the interests of the country or in the interests of his businesses.”

Libowitz said it could be argued that “Trump is seeking to use the White House as an extension of Trump Tower. That’s why we think that the only way to remove conflict of interest is for the Trump organisations to be sold outside of the family and the proceeds moved into a blind trust.”

Trump has given no indication that he will relinquish ownership of his global real estate and licensing empire. He has only pledged to make “no new deals” and hand over management to his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, who also have official roles in the transition team. Meanwhile, the billionaires continue to pack their bags for DC. Private equity billionaire Wilbur Ross has been nominated as commerce secretary with a mission “to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce”.

Ross, 79, who was called a “vulture investor” for buying up failing companies, cutting jobs and flipping them for often huge profits, has amassed a $2.9bn fortune via his private equity firm, WL Ross & Co. Ross last week agreed to buy a $12m seven-bedroom house on DC’s leafy Woodland Drive, known as “billionaire’s row”. The 10,000 sq ft gatehouse has a 12-seat cinema and staff quarters, and sits opposite the home of the current commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker.

Working with Ross as deputy commerce secretary will be Todd Ricketts, another billionaire and co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. He inherited his wealth from his billionaire father Joe Ricketts, founder of brokerage TD Ameritrade. The Ricketts family donated $1m to Trump’s campaign. Another beneficiary of dynastic wealth nominated to serve under Trump is Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, estimated by Forbes to be worth more than $5bn.

“I’m not shocked by this,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat. “It’s a billionaire president being surrounded by a billionaire and millionaire cabinet, with a billionaire agenda … to hurt the middle class. The appointments suggest that he’s going to break his campaign promises.”

Trump may feel secure in his picks, given Republican control of Congress, but there is no guarantee they will all make it into office. While Trump himself hasn’t published his tax return (despite a four-decade tradition of doing so) or sold any businesses that could represent a conflict of interest, his nominees’ finances will undergo intense scrutiny.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...f-billionaires

Some still think Trump is the working classes salvation.

**Mr Earl** · 19-12-2016, 11:46 AM

^Makes more sense to have savy businessmen working together with Russia, rather than stirring up the tired old fear and loathing dogma.

The one I love is when the Chinese stole some science drone to stir up some shit in the South China Sea. Trump tweets; "keep the damned thing bitches". Ya just gotta love it!

**Humbert** · 19-12-2016, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Makes more sense to have savy businessmen working together with Russia, rather than stirring up the tired old fear and loathing dogma.

A whole team of useful idiots. Supported by useless idiots.

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

^Makes more sense to have savy businessmen working together with Russia, rather than stirring up the tired old fear and loathing dogma.

The one I love is when the Chinese stole some science drone to stir up some shit in the South China Sea. Trump tweets; "keep the damned thing bitches". Ya just gotta love it!

Actually he tweeted

"We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...rc=twsrc%5Etfw
You seriously think this is acceptable behavior from a national leader?

**koman** · 19-12-2016, 12:16 PM

We get this big outpouring of angst every time somebody from Goldman Sachs, or a big oil company gets offered a key government job. You don't get to be a senior exec at Goldman, or Exxon, unless you are very smart and exceptionally good at what you do. These are super competitive environments, where snowflakes don't thrive.

Not a lot of affirmative action positions in the Donald's camp...sorry snowflakes, but it's time to STFU and wait for the new golden age to begin.....

The lack of proper gender balance, ethnic mix and openly gay must be very distressing, but merica needs a new style of governance to break out of the cycle of going nowhere and deeper in dept....

Do sit back and try to enjoy yourselves....it's only for four years...or maybe eight at the most......

**Humbert** · 19-12-2016, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by koman

We get this big outpouring of angst every time somebody from Goldman Sachs, or a big oil company gets offered a key government job. You don't get to be a senior exec at Goldman, or Exxon, unless you are very smart and exceptionally good at what you do. These are super competitive environments, where snowflakes don't thrive.

The problem is that he campaigned specifically against Goldman-Sachs. He took out ads villifying Blankfien. He railed against Clinton speaking to Goldman-Sachs. Now he turns around and fills his team with ex-Goldman employees. It's his hypocrisy that people are criticizing.

**bsnub** · 19-12-2016, 01:11 PM

Originally Posted by koman

You don't get to be a senior exec at Goldman, or Exxon, unless you are very smart and exceptionally good at what you do.

Yes fleecing the working class and sending the nation into depressions.

Originally Posted by koman

ut merica needs a new style of governance to break out of the cycle of going nowhere and deeper in dept..

Like giving the richest billionaires the largest tax breaks in history that will add $6 trillion in debt. Sounds like a good start.

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 01:43 PM

Here's the Chinese take on Trump.
He hasn't a clue.

Donald Trump has no idea how to run a superpower, says Chinese media
The Communist Party controlled Global Times says Trump ‘is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House’

That was the conclusion of China’s Global Times newspaper on Monday morning as the country’s media weighed in on the president-elect’s latest social media assaults on Beijing.

“Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month,” the Communist party controlled newspaper wrote in an editorial. “He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.”

The article came after the US president-elect again used Twitter, which has been blocked in China since 2009, to berate the leaders of the world’s second largest economy.

“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act,” Trump tweeted early on Saturday morning after it emerged the Chinese navy had seized a US naval drone that had been operating in the South China Sea.

In a second tweet, Trump wrote:

“We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!”

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!
8:59 AM - 18 Dec 2016

Those 221 characters threatened to further alienate China’s rulers, already reeling from Trump’s recent decision to hold a 10-minute phone call with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen and threat to upend long-standing US policy on Taiwan.

On Friday, President Obama cautioned Trump against allowing relations with China slip into “full conflict mode”.

In its editorial, the fervently nationalist Global Times, a state-run tabloid which sometimes reflects official thinking, indicated such a deterioration was certainly on the cards if Trump continued to act up.

People in China were unsure whether the billionaire’s attacks on Beijing were part of attempts to wage a “psychological war” or simply an example of his amateurishness.

“But if he treats China after assuming office in the same way as in his tweets, China will not exercise restraint,” the newspaper warned. “The Chinese government should be fully prepared for a hard-line Trump.”

In an online video that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, the newspaper’s controversial editor, Hu Xijin, said: “I don’t know if he is playing the psychological card with China or is in fact just unprofessional… China should teach him some lessons so he might learn to respect China after he is sworn in.”

A comment piece on the front page of the overseas edition of the Communist party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, also suggested Beijing would not be cowed by Trump’s provocations.

“It is difficult to understand his true psychology,” wrote Hua Yiwen, who the paper described as an international affairs expert. “But China shouldn’t spend much effort trying to guess what he is thinking. We should simply stand firm, take control of the situation and handle it calmly.”

Bill Bishop, a Washington DC-based China expert, said he sensed “abject despair” in the US capital at how Trump was now conducting US-China relations through misspelled tweets.

“This is unpresidented behaviour by a precedent-elect,” joked Bishop. “It would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high.”

China should plan to take Taiwan by force after Trump call, state media says
Read more
“This is not a business deal. This is a political relationship between nuclear powers who are already on the path towards conflict in several dimensions,”
(^THIS is what the idiot doesn't seem to grasp)
added Bishop, who publishes the influential Sinocism newsletter.

“This kind of uncertainty, this kind of petulance, this kind of random tweeting… is not a grand strategy that is going to push the Chinese onto their heels so they are going to make concessions. This is juvenile, immature, inexperienced behaviour that has the potential to lead to many problems in the US-China relationship, some of which could have some pretty serious and damaging ramifications.”

Bishop questioned the Chinese media’s suggestion that Trump’s tweets were part of a wily psychological ploy to force trade concessions from Beijing.

“I wouldn’t ascribe brilliant psychological warfare skills to Donald Trump,” he said.(

this guy tells it how it is)

Was it possible Trump’s tweets were part of an ingenious new master plan for Sino-US relations that would emerge after his inauguration on 20 January?

Bishop was skeptical.

“I think that is about as likely as Xi Jinping waking up on 1 December, 2017 and declaring China a democracy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...se-state-media

The likes of Trump, Earl, Koman, Rpeters, Texpat and longway (among others) don't seem to grasp that the world is a far more complicated place than they imagine and the U.S., at least for the time being, holds an important place in it.
They think it's all about snowflakes and diversity in the U.S.. It's FAR more than that.

**koman** · 19-12-2016, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by koman

We get this big outpouring of angst every time somebody from Goldman Sachs, or a big oil company gets offered a key government job. You don't get to be a senior exec at Goldman, or Exxon, unless you are very smart and exceptionally good at what you do. These are super competitive environments, where snowflakes don't thrive.

The problem is that he campaigned specifically against Goldman-Sachs. He took out ads villifying Blankfien. He railed against Clinton speaking to Goldman-Sachs. Now he turns around and fills his team with ex-Goldman employees. It's his hypocrisy that people are criticizing.

I know, but coming out against Blankfien, and the bank, does not mean that one should eliminate some of their best people from government office. Plenty of ex-GS people hate Blankfien. The current governor of the Bank of England; Mark Carney, is an ex-GS guy who detests Blankfien and GS detests him because he has been very outspoken against them, and the Wall St, banks in general. There are plenty more like him who at one time or another worked for those very banks.

Government is about management, and in order to gave good management you need good managers. You find the very best managers in the most successful companies. Why on earth would we eliminate management from the pool of best companies, just because we don't actually like some of the companies or the CEO's of those companies. This is NOT a snowflake enterprise where everybody gets a prize, even for coming in last.

There have been numerous ex-Goldman execs chosen for high placed government jobs over the years, without much comment or outpouring of grief from the populace.

Goldman Sachs is the most successful investment bank in the world. They employ 35,000 people, and hire the very top people from the best business schools. If the US government ran like Goldman......there would be no such thing as a libtard......

**sabang** · 19-12-2016, 02:08 PM

Well, lets see how Trump's Cabinet of self interested billionaires goes, compared to Obama's Cabinet of ineffectual politicians, public servants, and social worker types. Hardly a difficult act to follow. I'll say one thing for them though- they do seem to have a taste in wimmin that like getting their clothes off. Here's Louise Linton- engaged to Steven Mnuchin:-

Pussy Grabbers!

**Dragonfly** · 19-12-2016, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by redhaze

The entire idea of young people subsidizing insurance for old sick people is fundamentally flawed

that's how it works everywhere in the world,

problem in the US is that you have been without one for so long, you have all those sick people joining and using it

it should have been public and federal in a first stage, and private and local at a later stage

the whole thing needs to be re-worked with an iron fist, not the Obama style compromise, which is now revealing to be a disaster

**Dragonfly** · 19-12-2016, 03:24 PM

Originally Posted by Cujo

You seriously think this is acceptable behavior from a national leader?

in this day and age ? yes

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 03:34 PM

Originally Posted by koman

Goldman Sachs is the most successful investment bank in the world. They employ 35,000 people, and hire the very top people from the best business schools. If the US government ran like Goldman......there would be no such thing as a libtard......

Ahem.....

1933 - The Glass –Stiegel Act regulated interest rates, established deposit insurance, and erected a wall between commercial and investment banking by restricting the former from engaging in non-banking activities like securities and insurance.

1978 – A successful legal challenge to the state usury laws and the massive promotion of credit cards by the banks led to dramatic growth of credit card debt by consumers.

1979 – Pension regulation was loosened which created a new market for speculation and the capital to feed it.

1980 – Investors fled conventional interest bearing accounts to alternatives such as money market, venture capital and hedge funds which were lightly regulated.

1982- Congress passed the Garn-St. Germaine Depository Institution Act which deregulated the Savings and Loan industry. This led to speculation with other people’s money and a crisis which would cost the taxpayer $201 billion. The deregulation of interest rates at conventional banks also led to elimination of bank net-worth, accounting standards, and loan to value ratio requirements.

1999-Republican Phil Gramm successfully led the effort that repealed most of the Glass-Stiegel Act, which was a depression era law that kept Commercial Banking and Investment separated.

2000- Only a year later Gramm inserted the new Commodity Futures Modernization Act into a must pass budget bill that rocketed through the Congress. One part of this bill would prohibit the regulation of Derivatives which allowed finance gurus to leverage and speculate with other people’s money. By using derivatives, credit default swaps and other unregulated financial instruments the big banks were able to chop up and resell loans and mortgages as repackaged securities or derivatives. The new securitization became globalized and eventually affected the world economy

After the creation of new financial tools (like credit default swaps and derivatives) as well as more access to everybody’s money; the banks began to do high risk gambling just like a big casino. The new financial tools were backed by the government so that taxpayers would get hung with the bill.

2007 – The speculation and lack of effective regulation eventually led to the crash of 2007 and The Great Recession. The industry is not afraid to do it again because they know no one goes to jail and the government will bail them out.

Why didn’t more people know that the bailout had climbed into the trillions?

In an article Secrets and Lies of the Bailout, Matt Taibbi says “It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyper concentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it.

After the original $700 billion bailout, the ongoing bailout was kept very secret because Chairman Ben Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma — investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort. In fact, $7.7 trillion of the secret emergency lending was only disclosed to the public after Congress forced a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve in November of 2011. After the audit the public found out the bailout was in trillions not billions; and that there were no requirements attached to the bailout money - the banks could use it for any purpose.

The big got even bigger

Forbes Welcome

And he banks are taking over the government of the U.S. And those guys will eat Donald alive.
Banks don't give a shit about The American people or America, only how much they can GET.
The 1% will soon be even richer by magnitudes and the rest of you will be fucked. Very soon.

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 03:39 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonfly

Originally Posted by Cujo

You seriously think this is acceptable behavior from a national leader?

in this day and age ? yes

"in this day and age"?

A country is largely judged by its leader.
if the U.S. wants to be respected by other nations around the world they need to have a dignified leader.
Not an immature juvenile.

**Cujo** · 19-12-2016, 03:48 PM

By the way, isn't today the day the electoral college votes?
Do they phone it in or what?

**bsnub** · 19-12-2016, 03:51 PM

Originally Posted by Cujo

By the way, isn't today the day the electoral college votes?

Yes today is the day.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Do they phone it in or what?

No they meet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/us...to-expect.html

It is important to note that this is only the third time in American history that a candidate was so thoroughly trounced in the popular vote but was able to win the electoral college and the first time this century. The last time it happened was 1876.

**longway** · 19-12-2016, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by Cujo

Originally Posted by Dragonfly

Originally Posted by Cujo

You seriously think this is acceptable behavior from a national leader?

in this day and age ? yes

"in this day and age"?

A country is largely judged by its leader.
if the U.S. wants to be respected by other nations around the world they need to have a dignified leader.
Not an immature juvenile.

Which how russia and china treat the usa. Oblahblah is trying to convince the world that the russians think so little of the usa that they will actively interfere in its internal politics (and thats even after he told putin to cut it out

) and china thinks nothing of seizing us military hardware 400 nm off its coast, and iran took us sailors hostage.

You would think any dignified and mature leader would not make real russian interference public ever, let alone without any shred of evidence. The dims are being childish and absurd, as they always were, and now its almost impossible even for non-partisans to deny it.

even more dangerous is their concerted effort to censor free speech in the social media, so only views that conform to their narrative are boosted.

OTOH the level of ansgt being displayed by china and iran over trump shows that betrays their worry that life will not be so easy for them anymore.

**RPETER65** · 19-12-2016, 04:06 PM

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by koman

We get this big outpouring of angst every time somebody from Goldman Sachs, or a big oil company gets offered a key government job. You don't get to be a senior exec at Goldman, or Exxon, unless you are very smart and exceptionally good at what you do. These are super competitive environments, where snowflakes don't thrive.

The problem is that he campaigned specifically against Goldman-Sachs. He took out ads villifying Blankfien. He railed against Clinton speaking to Goldman-Sachs. Now he turns around and fills his team with ex-Goldman employees. It's his hypocrisy that people are criticizing.

He campaigned to get elected,he is the president elect and is choosing key members to accomplish his agenda if it does not align with some of his campaign rhetoric you can whine all you want but that is all you can do and are doing.

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