Debate thread (Sept. 10)

[TexasTiger 14,310]

10 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

I think the plan back in 2008-2009 was leave it alone. Which considering what was being proposed back then, I was in favor of leaving it alone. It was not as bad as they tried to make it seem. It is worse now, so I guess they got what they wanted. 

Since then, I could care less. At this point leave it alone as far as I am concerned. 

Democrats f-ed it up so, you should be asking yourself what they are going to do to fix their mistakes. 

Republicans have consistently promised to replace it with a better plan. Tried to repeal it over 60 times with no plan proposed. Do you ever ask yourself why you only hold one party accountable?

[SaltyTiger 8,579]

8 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Okay, but if you work 8 minutes on a phone call is it a quarter hour?

Fair enough if you spend an additional 7 minutes thinking and making notes about the call. 

[Didba 5,510]

8 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Okay, but if you work 8 minutes on a phone call is it a quarter hour?

We don’t charge by the hour so we don’t track billables. 

However, in certain cases we can recover attorney’s fees so we track our time then but you have to be pretty precise in that situation because the judge reviews and approves your fees. 

[Didba 5,510]

Just now, SaltyTiger said:

Fair enough if you spend an additional 7 minutes thinking and making notes about the call. 

This is very true. 

[wdefromtx 3,611]

Just now, TexasTiger said:

Republicans have consistently promised to replace it with a better plan. Tried to repeal it over 60 times with no plan proposed. Do you ever ask yourself why you only hold one party accountable?

I hold both parties accountable for not working together to fix it even back then. 

However, passing something that made things worse is on democrats. 

As others have said, politicians have to stop lining their pockets for pharma and insurance companies. 

[homersapien 12,245]

On 9/11/2024 at 4:03 PM, wdefromtx said:

Yeah, pretty crazy how ideology and political parties are still able to get a stranglehold and brainwash people. 

Speaking of which:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

After the debate, the network worked to keep the MAGA faithful in a state of blissful ignorance.

The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”

And then, in a universe all its own, was Fox News.

“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”

“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.

An ebullient Harris campaign immediately called for another debate. (Trump, who once called for debates “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” eventually refused the challenge after much hemming and hawing.) But Harris’s gesture of confidence prompted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to argue: “They don’t think she won. They don’t think she’s in a position to win this race.”

Sean Hannity interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Trump notched “a big win.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “the best closing in presidential debate history.”

Trump himself joined Hannity in the spin room. “I think it was my best debate ever,” he said.

And that was just within the first 75 minutes after the debate. The next morning, Trump was back, on “Fox & Friends.” “I won the debate by a lot,” he said, and “every single poll last night had me winning like 90-10.” The hosts did not contradict him. At the same time, Trump argued that ABC News should lose its broadcasting license, because “they had a rigged show with somebody that maybe even had the answers.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Watters returned to the airwaves. “I found [Harris] evasive, found her unlikable, preachy and, instinctually, I don’t know that’s going to play with men,” he said. “The signature moments that you see on the internet after this, she didn’t have any. … Trump had them all.”

On Thursday afternoon, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, a Post Opinions contributor, announced on Fox that Trump “is in the process of winning the debate” because “a debate isn’t over in a day” and “upon further review, the American public has decided that debate was rigged.”

It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.

Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcast on the network) that they had not seen what they just saw. Unless I missed it, viewers also weren’t told the other news of the night, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris after the debate.

Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem.

The main disagreement on the network seemed to be between those who believed the debate had been a triumph for Trump and those who believed the two ABC News moderators denied the GOP nominee his rightful triumph.

“Tonight’s debate was three on one,” proposed Hannity.

“Yes, it was a three-on-one debate,” chorused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Three against one,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.).

“It was three on one,” said Lara Trump.

“We had three against one,” said Trump himself.

During a commercial break came, in at least certain markets, an ad from right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein’s super-PAC blaming Harris for “murders, rapes, attacks on children” and for being “a complete failure.” It was difficult to distinguish the news coverage from the attack ad.

If Fox News viewers were listening carefully, they could have heard snippets of reality. Brit Hume acknowledged that “Trump had a bad night” and that Harris was “a different person from the absolute dunderhead so many of us thought she was during her conduct as vice president.” And a token Democrat, former congressman Harold Ford, politely disagreed with the general tenor of things: “I just think she won.”

But after 15 minutes of this post-debate “analysis,” Hannity took over the anchor chair and ended all dissent. He said Harris had presented nothing but “pre-rehearsed, memorized platitudes” and “lots of kind of weird faces and expressions.” He then went after the “left-wing moderators. The biggest loser of the night, ABC, Disney, Bob Iger’s network. It was a disgrace.” Hannity was upset that the moderators had not brought up the vice president’s position on “banning plastic straws,” among other things.

“It’s an embarrassment to journalism,” said Rubio.

“The ABC moderators were complicit in her running a completely fact free debate performance,” submitted Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.).

Trump running mate JD Vance, also joining Hannity, agreed that the moderators “did a terrible job” while “President Trump did a good job.”

Hannity was upset that Harris “wasn’t fact-checked.” (Maybe this was because Harris hadn’t claimed migrants were eating people’s pets.)

Hannity decided to “dip in” to post-debate remarks by Harris to supporters but cut that off after 31 seconds, just as she was about to give her assessment of the debate. Then he tried to broadcast an unannounced appearance by Trump in the spin room. But this didn’t go well, either, because, while it was difficult to hear Trump, reporters’ questions were loud and clear:

Why didn’t you look at her?

Did she get under your skin?

Why not let the performance speak for itself?

Why not have a second debate?

Trump made his way over to Hannity for some gentler treatment. The former president informed his interviewer that he had “won the debate” and “we’re getting great reviews.” As evidence, he cited viewer surveys from right-wing sites. “We looked at one poll, it was 92 to 7,” he said. “We looked at another, 86 to 3.”

“Wow,” Hannity replied.

At one point, Trump started to veer into repeating his claims that migrants are eating pets — and Hannity cut him off.

“Your people are calling for you to roll,” he said.

The next morning on Fox News, Trump was still maintaining that “every single poll had us winning by a lot, despite the fact that it was an unfair debate obviously.”

And the Fox coverage continued to support that view. “It was a disaster for her last night. … Donald Trump did far better. … Who the hell do they think they are fact-checking?” House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.), on Fox Business Network, cited the same “polls” that Trump did, saying, “he clearly prevailed.”

Vance, in another interview with Fox, said voters “are not going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.” (He was talking not about his boss but about Taylor Swift.)

In one lonely corner of Fox, host Neil Cavuto tried to preserve an island of sanity: “He says … he won the debate and all the polls show that he won the debate. I haven’t seen a single one show that,” he remarked to Trump surrogate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“They’re polls that you see on the internet and a lot of them probably have statistical problems with them,” Kennedy acknowledged. “I would suspect that the polling over the next week is going to show probably a slight drop in his support, particularly among independents.”

Trump responded as though Cavuto had just eaten his pet. “Neil Cavuto, Fox’s Lowest Rated Anchor, is one of the WORST on Television,” he posted on social media.

Of course, Trump doesn’t have a real pet. Fox News is his pet. And if he’s to keep the MAGA faithful in a state of blissful ignorance, he’s going to need Fox to roll over — again and again.

[homersapien 12,245]

1 minute ago, wdefromtx said:

However, passing something that made things worse is on democrats. 

 

I did not make things worse. It made them better, as a majority of people understand.

 

[homersapien 12,245]

On 9/11/2024 at 4:33 PM, wdefromtx said:

How so? I never denied the results. 

I do see people on this forum deny and outright lie to support their side. Both sides. 

Only one side has made the word "denier" represent something very specific - believing a lie about who won the 2020 election. 

[homersapien 12,245]

On 9/11/2024 at 6:22 PM, shabby said:

60 million people watched this debate. 60 million people got to watch Kamala define herself. And to most she defined herself as very presedential with plans to boost the middle class. This debate couldn't have gone any better for her. Went even Fox News Talking Heads are acknowledging the whooping you know it's a route

Only a very select few.  (See article above.)

[wdefromtx 3,611]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I did not make things worse. It made them better, as a majority of people understand.

 

It absolutely got worse for many. 

Costs immediately started to rise when it went into effect.

Go ask people that had really good plans that lost them because they were banned. Essentially to help some get coverage it forced people to give up great coverage. 

[homersapien 12,245]

On 9/11/2024 at 8:37 PM, wdefromtx said:

Just one of her lies. The ones that will stick with voters are ones such as her lying about her positions. 
 

That will matter especially in a state like PA. It just reinforces what they know about her position. 

She didn't "lie" about her "positions", she changed them, and admitted doing so.

Now if you want to accuse her of "flip-flopping", fine.  But it's not lying.

Edited September 13 by homersapien

[TexasTiger 14,310]

17 minutes ago, Didba said:

We don’t charge by the hour so we don’t track billables. 

However, in certain cases we can recover attorney’s fees so we track our time then but you have to be pretty precise in that situation because the judge reviews and approves your fees. 

I once clerked for an attorney who rounded up big time.

[TexasTiger 14,310]

4 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

It absolutely got worse for many. 

Costs immediately started to rise when it went into effect.

Go ask people that had really good plans that lost them because they were banned. Essentially to help some get coverage it forced people to give up great coverage. 

Then it shouldn’t be hard for Republicans to roll out that long promised better plan— why aren’t you bothered they haven’t?

[auburnatl1 6,182]

20 minutes ago, AU9377 said:

Health care costs were out of control long before the ACA.  We have decided as a nation that we want sick and injured people to get medical care whether or not they can pay for it.  Frankly, if we consider ourselves to be one of the greatest nations, ensuring that our citizens have access to medical care shouldn't be much of a debate.  Every other similar country and every one of our allies has a form of universal health care coverage. 

The question becomes how we do that?  The ACA is full of faults, but it is a step in the right direction.  Trusting the private sector to deal with the problem was a fool's errand.  Doing so has produced the highest costs on the planet.  We pay close to an average of 3 times what citizens of other countries pay for prescription drugs.  Many drugs cost 30 and 40 times  more in the U.S.

The ACA can be made much better, but politicians have to empty their pockets of money from Big Pharma in order to even start the conversation.  It is obscene how those companies suck money from the federal budget.

I don’t want to derail thread and I’m no expert - but WHY are health care costs so high?  Before people go down their muscle memory greedy pharma, PEs, insurance companies, ect  paths - their  % (ebit) profits are no higher than 50 years ago. However, because it’s become so complex to manage the sheer administration of medicine - the overhead costs are proportionally exploding. Go into any any drs office or hospital today - what are the number/ratio  of people managing gov and insurance forms/regulations/processes  ect vs actual … dr’s? What do you think it was in the 70s?  It’s not purely as simple as this but the inefficiency of that industry is incredibly obvious to the eye and is self inflicted crazy. Just a thought.

[Didba 5,510]

1 minute ago, TexasTiger said:

I once clerked for an attorney who rounded up big time.

Unfortunately, not surprising. 

[TexasTiger 14,310]

8 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Only a very select few.  (See article above.)

They were shocked in the moment. Quickly regrouped on dishonest talking points.

[JMWATS 280]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

She didn't "lie" about her "positions", she changed them, and admitting doing so.

Now if you want to accuse her of "flip-flopping", fine.  But it's not lying.

So she's free to change them and "flip-flop" again on Nov 6.  

[TexasTiger 14,310]

1 minute ago, auburnatl1 said:

I don’t want to derail thread and I’m no expert - but WHY are health care costs so high?  Before people go down their muscle memory greedy pharma, PEs, insurance companies, ect  paths - their  % (ebit) profits are no higher than 50 years ago. However, because it’s become so complex to manage the sheer administration of medicine - the overhead costs are proportionally exploding. Go into any any drs office or hospital today - what are the number/ratio  of people managing gov and insurance forms/regulations/processes  ect vs actual … dr’s? What do you think it was in the 70s?  It’s not purely as simple as this but the inefficiency of that industry is incredibly obvious to the eye and is self inflicted crazy. Just a thought.

We pay for insurance- not health care.

[TexasTiger 14,310]

Just now, JMWATS said:

So she's free to change them and "flip-flop" again on Nov 6.  

No politician has ever flipped more than Trump. 

[Leftfield 3,380]

1 minute ago, JMWATS said:

So she's free to change them and "flip-flop" again on Nov 6.  

As is Trump.

[wdefromtx 3,611]

21 minutes ago, Didba said:

We don’t charge by the hour so we don’t track billables. 

However, in certain cases we can recover attorney’s fees so we track our time then but you have to be pretty precise in that situation because the judge reviews and approves your fees. 

We bill for everything. LOL 

Even analysis time on our machines. Our workstations have an hourly rate when running certain software. 

[auburnatl1 6,182]

1 minute ago, TexasTiger said:

We pay for insurance- not health care.

The point being the entire system is a bloated overhead crazy mess.

[JMWATS 280]

2 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

No politician has ever flipped more than Trump. 

You need an abacus to keep up with the variation in political positions of 2020 Candidate Senator Harris and the positions espoused by Vice President Harris in the last 60 days.  Bernie Sanders called it like it is.  

 

[auburnatl1 6,182]

17 minutes ago, JMWATS said:

So she's free to change them and "flip-flop" again on Nov 6.  

It’s a fair concern. However, again imo both parties have gone social activist and fiscally clueless crazy. If, due to voter “competition” to attract moderates (the non crazy), one party decides to evolve their position to attract those voters…. thank God. That’s the point.  If she does flip flop she’ll lose in 4 years and get trounced in the midterms in 2.

Competition to attract voters (and in business - customers) actually does work if given a chances.

[homersapien 12,245]

11 hours ago, auburnatl1 said:

Thank you. You know you’re in trouble when a “conservative” is in a free stuff contest.

ps both the dems and maga need to visit grown up land.  It’s scary neither candidate even mentions it. 

 

FWIW

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/13/harris-trump-deficit-debt/

How would Trump and Harris affect U.S. debt? The difference is huge.

Trump’s plans would add $4.5 trillion to the deficit; the vice president’s are more fiscally responsible.

In the first presidential debate in the 1992 election, the word “deficit” came up 13 times. Each candidate was pressed on their substantive plans to bring the U.S. fiscal house in order. The victor in that race — Bill Clinton — is the only president to have achieved budget surpluses in the last half-century.

At this week’s debate, the deficit was referenced just twice.

That’s unfortunate, because the issue is pressing. The national debt is on an unsustainable path: Federal debt relative to gross domestic product is on track to surpass its post-World War II record by 2027, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It won’t stop there. The country will almost certainly need more government investment in the years ahead because of national security concerns, an aging population and the existential threat posed by climate change.

Of course, there has not been a presidential candidate in the 21st century who presented a fully satisfying plan to fix the debt.

But here, as in most arenas, the gap between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump is large. Trump’s proposals would add at least $4.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. In contrast, Harris could actually achieve some deficit reduction depending upon how much of the GOP tax cuts she opts to extend. At worst, her plan would increase deficits only modestly, by less than one-fifth of the Trump total.

Trump would add at least $4.5 trillion to the deficit if he's elected

Extend Trump tax cuts	$4.6 trillion
Reduce corporate tax rate to 15% for some firms	$0.2 trillion to $0.6 trillion
No tax on tips	$0.15 trillion to $0.25 trillion
No tax on Social Security benefits	$1.6 trillion
Tariffs	-$2 trillion
Total deficit impact	$4.5 trillion to $5 trillion

Source: The Budget Lab at Yale, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and author's calculations

 

Harris has a clear plan to be fiscally responsible

Extend Trump tax cuts for taxpayers earning below $400k	$2 trillion to $3 trillion
No tax on tips for service and hospitality workers	$60 billion
Expand tax credit for low-income taxpayers	$800 billion
Decrease housing costs	$100 billion
Deficit reduction in the Biden budget	-$3.3 trillion
Lower capital gains rate than Biden	$50 billion
Total deficit impact	-$290 billion to $710 billion

 

Source: The Budget Lab at Yale, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and author's calculations

 

The gulf between Trump and Harris is the byproduct of two fundamental policy differences.

First, Harris supports raising taxes on high-earners and large corporations. Trump supports lowering them.

Harris has been clear that she embraces essentially all of the tax increases outlined in President Joe Biden’s budget, with the exception of his capital tax changes. (She would raise capital gains rates for high earners by less than Biden has proposed.) Overall, these proposals would generate around $5 trillion in additional tax revenue from the wealthy and corporations over the next decade.

In contrast, Trump would lower taxes on these groups by trillions over this period. He would keep the rate cuts going for those at the top and give corporations an even bigger tax cut by lowering their tax rate to 15 percent (down from 21 percent today) for firms that he classifies as “American producers.” (Who qualifies is unclear, and consequently, so is the deficit impact of this measure.)

I suspect Trump and his advisers would contest my calculus. They would argue — and have argued, repeatedly — that these tax cuts pay for themselves, in the form of increased economic growth. It’s true that cutting taxes can lead businesses to invest in themselves in ways that grow the economy, such as when a firm uses its tax savings to buy a new factory or launch a product line. But it’s not enough of a boost to come close to offsetting the costs.

Trump’s tax cuts — and our historical experience more generally — have proved how costly this policy can be. The best empirical evidence on the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is that economic growth offset just two percentage points of the 41 percent decrease in corporate tax collections that resulted from the legislation. Doubling down on those approaches will be just as problematic for our nation’s finances.

The second key difference between the candidates? Harris is more committed to tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners.

Her campaign has paired tax increases on the top with cuts for the bottom, in the form of new and expanded credits for families, small businesses and new homeowners.

In contrast, the only real revenue raiser Trump has embraced is a tax increase on most Americans in the form of global tariffs that would substantially raise the cost of imports. To be sure, tariffs would decrease the deficit. Estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggest they would raise around $2.75 trillion over a decade, likely closer to $2 trillion when you take into account the fact that other countries will retaliate with tariffs of their own.

But how deficit reduction is achieved matters. Trump’s $2 trillion of tariff revenue would be raised by forcing Americans of all income levels to pay thousands of dollars extra for the goods they buy.

Any fair fiscal comparison shows this election is not a close call. If the deficit is your top issue, Harris is the clear choice.

Edited September 13 by homersapien