POLITICAL JUNKIES

Hi Carol !

I am a Cruz supporter but will enthusiastically support Donald if he is the nominee. You and I are probably the only GOP on the thread but these ladies are smart, funny and entertaining. Please stick around.

Just a few musings on recent thread posts here and there.

Thanks for the memories! I was an infant when JFK was assassinated so I love reading about those times. What a horrible time for the nation :0(

Although I am GOP, I would have voted for JFK. I could have been a JFK Democrat which is what Kasich , Romney,McCain, actually remind me of. This uber left socialist stuff, I can't stomach. I have been GOP since college when I proudly voted for Reagan in college for his second term. I missed the voting age for his first term.

I laugh when people eviscerate Nixon as he was impeached for just a fraction of what Hillary has done.

Those who mention the Fairness Doctrine: The media is so left leaning , I think the fairness doctrine is obsolete. People make fun of FOX but even the hard core opinion shows like Hannity have both sides. Megyn Kelly does straight on interviews that none of the networks want to bother with such as the Benghazi families. So I think things are fair. You guys have MSNBC, NPR, ABC, CBS, CNN. I'll take my FOX, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and YES I LISTEN TO RUSH. I didn't watch him on TV but his radio program is quite enlightening.

Sandy, Big difference between what Powell and Rice did with e-mails as opposed to Hillary. Check out this Newsweek article. Newsweek is not exactly a bastion of right wing thinking.

http://www.newsweek.com/colin-powell-emails-hillar...

Speaking of the Trumpettes, I love it when Jesse Watters interviews the Bernie supporters to see exactly what they "know". Most are their for the fun.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/02/04/jesse-watter...

And here is my favorite pundit of all. Judge Jeanine Pirro from last night. Whether you think Mrs. Clinton is guilty or not, She and her posse are certainly getting concerned. She has finally appointed someone to "look into" her accusations.

https://www.facebook.com/judgejeaninepirro/?fref=t...

Let's see what this week brings for the BC.org "Junkies" !

1. As Ted would say thank God for Pat RN !! I'm not going anywhere!! I love a good political thread! I am 63 and was in six grade when Kennedy got shot! My son-in-law worked with Judge Jeanine the New York City is her assistant DA! She's a real hoot! If you noticed I really don't say much about Hillary I just can't go there. Ok going to watch Greta now!!

Carol, ChicagoReader, we are soul sisters. I am recording Greta as I have to move on to homework. Working with Judge Jeanine would have been a riot.

It is interesting to hear about JFK democrats who would now vote GOP. The swing voters are always intriguing. My late father was one, and he and my mother cancelled out each other's vote many a time. I'm fairly sure he voted for Benjamin Spock in '72, not being able to stomach either Nixon or McGovern, and I think he voted for Reagan at least once. He was leaning toward McCain in 2008 until Palin was put on the ticket, whereupon he denied he'd ever considered not supporting Obama. So he was an interesting conundrum.

In 92, my then-boss told me (Bill) Clinton was going to win. She said her 60-something brother, who lived outside Pittsburgh, had voted republican his entire life but had just announced he was supporting Bill Clinton. So that's a measure of how broad Clinton's appeal was at that point.

I live in NY and am self-employed, as is my husband, and the ACA has saved my life. Before its passage, I would likely have been subject to lifetime caps and pre-existing coverage limitations. I don't think, with a BC diagnosis, I could ever have gotten affordable coverage again. But it's true that in NY there is no out-of-network coverage through the ACA exchanges. I think that's a huge flaw, and it's certainly something that I hope will be fixed at the state level.

As I have said here before, I strongly support Hillary Clinton. While I share some of Sanders's views, I have a lot of trouble seeing him working with congress or even his fellow democrats. He doesn't seem to be raising money for down-ticket democrats, whereas Clinton is doing quite a lot of that. I see her as a consensus builder and a pragmatist.

For me, this election is about the supreme court and healthcare. (It would also be about education if I could figure out what any of the candidates stand for, but none of them are well-articulated enough on the issue to suit me.)

Rainnyc, so glad you got coverage. I agree folks like you really benefit but ACA really needs to be retooled so less people get hurt. I do realize it has been a godsend for people like yourself.,

Rainyc - I couldn't even go to SK under the HMO offered to me for even a second opinion and that is in state. I actually am paying as would had been a pre existing condition. This is where Trump would try and tear down state lines etc. let me be clear on what happened to me. My breast cancer returned after 18 years of remission. MO dragged her feet in getting a bone biopsy done. She had never seen breast cancer come back after 18 years remission, I went from the month of June to the end of October before she finally had the biopsy done. X-ray showed a lytic lesion in June. I finally had a bone biopsy done in October at Albany medical center that took three weeks for the biopsy to come back. Or should I say it sat on their desk for two weeks. By that time the cancer had spread to my femur and I had to have a rod put in. My bone biopsy showed I was triple negative and chemo was set for the following week . I paid out-of-pocket for a second opinion at Dana Farber Where they did not agree with the results of my biopsy. Thank God I went there. January 2016 I was able to get the one plan that is offerred to be treated out of network. This just was not fair in my situation. We have to have something changed at the state level.

Part I

Interesting discussion thread, and one that proves to me yet again that both sides in the American political debate have blinders on. Right or left, Republican or Democrat, you only see and accept what you want to see and accept. There are a lot of claims on both sides about being open-minded, but I really don't see much open-mindedness in the posts (with a few exceptions).

Background first. I'm Canadian. So I don't have a dog in the hunt. Except that I do, since the U.S. president is the 'leader of the free world'. This means that the rest of us, who don't get a say in who is elected President, have to live with the consequences. Under the past two presidents, it hasn't been much fun for the rest of the world.

I'm a Political Junkie who's been following U.S. politics forever. My undergrad degree is in PoliSci, with a focus on Canadian and U.S. politics. I've lived in the U.S.. So although Canadian, I'm quite qualified to discuss the topic.

I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative. I liked Bill Clinton (except for those personal issues). I didn't like George W. Bush. I strongly supported Hillary in 2008, as those active in the political thread here at the time will well remember; I felt that Obama was too inexperienced and shouldn't have jumped the queue. His time would have come, but he was not ready. I didn't like his positions on Israel and the Middle East. In hindsight I think I nailed it, but I admit that I'm biased, of course.

Cruz really scares me. A Trump presidency scares me. The social liberal in me likes some of what Bernie says, but the fiscal conservative in me doesn't like him at all. If I had a vote, it would be for Hillary. She's by far the most qualified and the only one I would trust on foreign policy issues.

So with that as background, I ask….How in the world can anything think that Hillary doesn't lie and that she hasn't broken the law? I know where most Republicans stand on this, but I don't see how an open-minded Democrat, looking at all the facts, can not also see this. Hillary was the U.S. Secretary of State, one of the most powerful and sensitive jobs in the world. She set it up so that she could send and receive all her emails off-line on her own personal server. That's not suspicious or concerning to anyone?

Imagine if instead of the government, she worked for a corporation. Think about it. You start a new job. You are sitting at your desk and the IT guy drops by, handing you your new company laptop and a paper with your company email address. You hand them back, saying you prefer to use your personal Gmail account and your own computer. And by the way, you have your own server too, so all your email to external contacts will be going through that server, rather than the company server. Do you think you would still have your job at the end of the day? Not a chance. But that's what Hillary did. And she did it in one of the most sensitive jobs in the world.

Ah, but nothing Hillary sent was "marked classified". Seriously? Think about the job. What about being Secretary of State is not classified? Maybe Hillary and her staff chose to never stamp "Classified" on their emails but just because the markings weren't there doesn't mean that the information was not classified. As Secretary of State, it was Hillary's responsibility to know what was classified and what was not. So anything marked "classified" after the fact probably should have been marked "classified" right from the start. It's a serious breach.

Oh yes. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice did the same thing as Hillary. No they didn't. They both had 2 email accounts, one personal and one for classified government business. With Powell, 2 emails that perhaps should have gone to his classified account instead went to his personal account but it was still on the government server. In Condi's case, it was her staffers who received 10 classified emails on their personal accounts. In all cases it was unintentional, as opposed to Hillary's situation where her email system was set up to intentionally bypass the government system.

What about the Clinton Foundation, which shared several high level employees with Hillary's State Department? How does anyone ignore the situations where a country/company/group with a long-standing unresolved issue in front of the State Department suddenly had the issue resolved in their favour shortly after a major donation was given to The Clinton Foundation, or after Bill was richly paid for a speech to that country/company/group? Or the times when corporate donations to The Clinton Foundation were followed by Hillary, as Secretary of State, negotiating a deal favouring this company with another government? Quid pro quo. Ah, but there's no proof! Maybe because the emails on the personal server were destroyed? To ignore these situations because there is no smoking gun (well, duh, of course there isn't, Hillary's not an idiot; why do you think she set up the private server?) is to bury your head in the sand.

Benghazi. I know, I know. So many investigations and nothing's been found. True, but it's also true that a lot of documentation that's been requested has not been provided. Some appears to be lost forever, thanks to Hillary's server. So no one has all the facts. I have no idea what Hillary's role was in what happened that night, and whether anything different could have been done. But what happened afterwards… I can buy the argument that initially, nobody knew what or who was behind the attacks so it's not surprising that as time went on, stories changed. But if that's true, why didn't they say so? In the early discussions, why didn't they simply say that the attack was under investigation? Instead, they trotted out Susan Rice to all the Sunday shows to say that the attack was in response to the video. Obama said the same thing at the U.N.. Hillary said that same thing in her public address when the bodies arrived back in the U.S. (check youtube, it's there). If they didn't know for sure what happened, why did they all sing from the same songsheet and blame the video? Fine, don't say it's a planned terrorist attack if you don't know that for sure, but why communicate such a clear, definitive explanation of what happened – when you know that it's most likely untrue? How is that not a blatant, intentional lie?

Enough about Hillary. Despite all I wrote, if I had a vote, I would vote for her. She is by far the best of a bad lot and she has the foreign policy chops that a president needs. But I don't for a second believe that she did not lie and did not break the law. And I can't believe all the Democrats and Hillary supporters who have their eyes covered and ears blocked and who suspend all rational and logical thought to conclude that Hillary doesn't lie and has done nothing wrong.

Beesie IMHO you are not wrong!

The Sec'y of State doesn't decide which information is or isn't classified, the State Dept--an entrenched bureaucracy staffed mostly by career employees who outlast the administrations in power on the day they were hired--does. Yup, that stuff is decided by a large staff of exempt employees who have largely risen through the career civil service ranks--as are the staffs of most Cabinet departments. The Sec'y doesn't make the rules, nor does (s)he administer the Department--rather, her or his primary function is to be this nation's chief diplomat, the ambassador of all ambassadors; and secondarily to advise and assist the President in foreign policy and sometimes urgent national security decisions.

Then there's the utter bull crap about abortions leading to "killing babies" and "selling baby body parts." Sorry, but if carrying to term means endangering the life of the mother, refusing to let her timely abort a fetus or even embryo usually results in the death of both mother and baby. If a choice has to be made, the life of the mother must prevail over that of the fetus. Funny how so many who decry the "killing" of the unborn also oppose providing adequate support for children already in existence or for contraception to prevent those pregnancies from occurring in the first place. And if it weren't for Planned Parenthood, millions of women would get no medical care at all....,including cancer screenings, gynecological health care, prenatal and pregnancy-maintenance care and even basic physical exams. I ought to know: PP was my primary care source during my student days. They were the ones who discovered my hypertension.

One more example of FOXNews and Rushbaugh's proud tradition of fact-free "journalism." The second surest way for a conservative (actually, reactionary) to get a liberal to tune out is to cite FOX, Breitbart or Newsmax as gospel; the surest way is to post tabloid-esque Facebook memes instead of taking the time to articulate one's thoughts and arguments in one's own carefully chosen words, with facts and logic (not just catchphrases) to back them up

PatRN, thanks! Agree completely ACA has plenty of room for improvement, for all the reasons Kayb stated above, much more articulately than I could have done myself.

LovesMaltese, first, it absolutely stinks that you had a recurrence after 18 years, and that your MO dragged her feet. You were very smart to pay out of pocket for the 2nd opinion. I'm surprised that you have a plan with an out of pocket option of any sort, because we don't in the NY City area--but I know that plans vary quite a bit in different parts of the state. Anyway, I hope your treatment is working well. I too have paid out of pocket for care.

And yes, many ACA fixes need to happen at the state level, including making sure that MSK is included in some of the ACA plans. I'm being treated there, but only because my previous plan included it in network. When that insurer went out of business last fall, the state struck a deal with a plan only for those patients in active treatment. But it's a band-aid fix, not the real thing. Want to join me in a letter-writing campaign to state legislators?

Exbrnxgirl, I'd agree with you that most education policies happen at the state level, but Obama/Duncan's Race to the Top plan essentially bribed states to adopt Common Core. As with other policies, I can only comment on the NY implementation, which has been horrific and damaging, especially to the most vulnerable: those in poverty and with disabilities. Which might be why 20% of NY state children opted out of testing last year. At least in this state, Common Core is inextricably linked to terribly flawed and developmentally inappropriate state tests, and the perception--in very Obama-friendly territory--is that his administration stumbled badly with this policy. But yes, the perception is also that John King, the former NY state commissioner of education, can actually do us less damage at the federal level than he did when he had direct control over state policies.

Oh yes, I have to quickly tell you about a dream I had last night (I just remembered it after I made my last post). I dreamed that every member of Congress was kicked out (how that happened, the dream did not show). In a big gymnasium, 50 big balls (like they use to spin around the letters when they call Bingo) were set up. Into each ball was placed the names of all the people in each state who had voted in the last election. The balls were spun & 3 names were drawn out. The first two drawn would serve as the state's Senators, the third would go to the House.......think of it, it would take the money & endless campaigning out of the races, and I bet that Congress would get more done!

Omgosh, Ruth, your dream has all the making of a sitcom pilot or made for TV movie! Incredible!

I also admire Bernie as a truthful sincere man but I just don't believe in socialism.

Beesie, I think you are a closet republican LOL cuz you had me until your vote for HRC. I can't think of one thing she has accomplished as SOS.

Chisandy, FOX uses very credible news sources. You may not agree with their opinion hosts but their hard news people are always straight on. Please do not confuse opinion people like Hannity with the hard news reporters like Brett Baier, Ed Henry and Katherine Herridge. They just cover things the rest of the media doesn't care to mention.

I agree that PP does offer other important health care services but other community health centers could do the same thing if given the funding PP has. There is nothing magical about PP. The selling of baby parts and tissue is not false. Although I don't agree with the methods the people used to get them on tape, the admission of PP administrators and providers dealing of tissue is indisputable. I watched all the tapes in their entirety and the wheeling and dealing on parts/tissue and pricing is fact. Again, I reiterate that the tape was done under false pretenses but you can't ignore the admissions. PP came out after the tapes and changed their policy to not accept payment for fetal tissue and parts anymore. That is fact .

We all have varied personal opinions and philosophies/ experiences regarding abortion not appropriate here but it is fact that some states allow second trimester , partial birth abortion. Sometimes the baby might be viable outside the womb. It is fact that some PP clinics offer second trimester pregnancy termination in these states. So the termination isn't bull crap it is just how one defines it. . Of course the life of the mother should be an an exception but it is done for many other reasons including convenience. Conservatives do not want to take services away from children but would prefer to get people back to work and independent. A great example of this was the bipartisan partnership between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich back in the 90's with welfare reform.

What really bothers me about Donald Trump's campaign is the fear mongering. I know several Muslims personally and all of them are normal every day people who work, have kids, worship and pay taxes. They are scared to death right now. Things like this http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/02/us/muslim-family-united-airlines/index.html or this http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/18/us/muslims-sikh-sue-airline/ are a direct result of comments made by people like Mr. Trump.

It is inexcusable that this family and this party of young men were asked to leave the plane. Shameful actually. There is NO AMERICA that I want to live in that fosters this type of attitude about any one religion/culture. After the flight attendant checked the ticket and saw the clearly Muslim names, they were then asked to de-plane? Despite all of the protests from the RW, this is eerily similar to Hitler and his tactics. It is exactly how things like genocide and interment camps happen. Not in my country. NO!

The true measure of a great Country is not exclusion of anyone but rather inclusion of all. We were founded on Freedom of Religion principals and being a Muslim is the right of anyone who chooses to worship their God in whatever fashion that represents. It appears that the NRA supporters who cite the Constitution and their right to bear arms constantly do not believe in Freedom of Religion as strongly as they due the right to keep their firearms. Ugh!