Friday, May 5, 2017

Waltzing On The Titanic

Remarking Openly,

Donald Trump had a pleasant meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull:
"I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do," Trump continued. "We're going to have great health care very soon." (Australia does have a very good medical system.)
That's not the position of the Republican Party, but it is the position of Senator Sanders, who had these spontaneous remarks after laughing:
"Thank you, Mr. President. Let us move to a 'Medicare for all' system that does what every other major country on earth does: guarantee health care to all people at a fraction of the cost per capita what we spend," Sanders said after seeing the clip. "Thank you, Mr. President. We'll quote you on the floor of the Senate."

Here is the rundown of what the AHCA accomplishes in it's current form. It eliminates mandates and taxes on health insurance (sighs of relief). It cuts coverage and cuts the Medicaid expansion plans as many areas are getting poorer. It might cost the federal government a little less in the long run, according to projections before it was revised. It doesn't actually "repeal" anything. It's dead in the Senate. The Senate has to make it's own Chimeracare.
Goldman Sachs dryly observes that the AHCA will take a long time to finalize, and will probably delay any tax-cut legislation into 2018.

Emmanuel Macron, French Hillary Clinton, or more like Teflon Bill?
There was a leak of high resolution Macron documents of bank accounts in Bahamas and Cayman Islands, which appear authentic. There was also hacking of Macron's computer system, and social media has been tweeting it up. "Russians" say the Macron-campers. Can Macron lose a 20 point lead by Sunday? Does he really have a 20 point lead, like the polls say?

The slant on this article is that NGOs are good and Greek government is bad, which is not what I hear. The Greek government is relieving NGOs of responsibility for any refugee care in the next few months. The Greek authorities will get far less money than the NGOs for the care of asylum seekers, and are giving bonuses of cash and airline tickets home to those who will accept the inevitable deportation 2 weeks earlier. Reports on the ground are that Greeks of all stripes are giving better care, and the Greek government is accountable, where NGOs are not at all. NGOs bring in foreign nationals at great expense, supplies from afar, tents and porta-potties. How's that efficient?

The EU has an international plan to thwart human smuggling across the Mediterranean this summer: 
China, Stop Making Those Inflatable Boats Everybody Uses!
There, that should fix it. 

Russia says that those "safe zones" or regional ceasefire zones that are being negotiated in Syria will not be open to American and NATO military aircraft (nor presumably Israeli), Russia can say that since the US fired off 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase in the desert, and 23 got there, while 36 got lost in the Bermuda Triangle (Electronic attacks are presumed, just like North Korea's missiles keep blowing up and crashing.)

It looks like this multilateral agreement to cease hostilities in the designated parts of Syria just went into effect.

The United States, under President George H.W. Bush adopted a secret policy of developing first-strike capability against Russia and China, then either using it, or forcing them to disarm under threat. President Clinton advanced that agenda with the Bosnian war, encroaching upon Russia, and that has not stopped. The George W. Bush (aka Cheney) Presidency turned all knobs to "11", and under Barack Obama the ability of US Submarine launched missiles to destroy Russian ICBMs was tripled by a high-tech accuracy-upgrade, allowing them to detonate just above the target, no matter the altitude. The Iranian ICBM threat was just an excuse to put anti-missiles close to Russia, and the North Korea threat gets anti ballistic missiles right up next to China, and also Russia now. Yes, billions of humans could die, but that's beside the point, isn't it?

Burnt Offering

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