Trump 51: The Lame Duck a l‘Orange

[Cartmann99]

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, church_of_dog said:

I think mostly kale, broccoli, and overcooked lima beans.

 

Whatever we feed him, I think it should cost $600/ yr, just like the stimulus.

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

Would we even have much of an Internet with any news opinion sites then? I see all non information sites going away after lawsuits are litigated.

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, church_of_dog said:

What are the fundamental issues (aside from our current political ridiculousness) that prevent the US from having a working national healthcare system as it seems to work pretty well in Europe and Canada and other places.

Does it really boil down to a cultural tolerance for higher taxes in order to fund these programs?  Or is it more a matter of the government allocating existing funds differently?  Or something else entirely?

I think there are a couple of things that prevent you from having a working system that ensures everyone has access to affordable healthcare and paid sick- and maternity leave. The main ones are:

- politics being influenced by lobbyists/ donors in such a way that big pharma can essentially buy policies— and it’s legal

- political spending is heavily skewed towards the military so that there not enough left for anything else (at least that’s what they tell you)

- Americans have been fed lies for decades about the actual cost of universal healthcare and other basic humanitarian regulations such as sick leave, maternity (and paternity) leave, minimum wages (high enough to ensure a very basic standard of living) and education. These lies have been internalized by the American public, and many people think it’s all too costly, they will be paying for other people who don’t want to work and the system will be fraudulently taken advantage of. People believe that anything that is labeled as socialism is per definition evil instead of simply taking care of basic needs and human rights. Because, and bear with me because this may be a radical thought for America, ensuring your citizens are capable of working and contributing to society is actually the smart thing to do in a capitalist economy. The wellbeing of a country’s inhabitants should be the main focus, not that of companies and rich donors.

What my point actually boils down to is that big companies and donors are controlling the narrative. Get rid of their ability to influence politics and essentially writing policies, and basic healthcare, childcare, education, infrastructure and so much more is within easy reach. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by fraurosena
Wording

[Smash!]

At least where I’m at, you have to bring in a doctor’s certificate if you’re still on sick leave after a few days. Which means you can cheat but it’s very limited. If work still doesn’t trust you they can demand that you go to an so called independent medical examiner who has to confirm that you’re really sick. I don’t know anyone who has this happened to them tough.
I have to add tough that it’s not a good look if you call in sick a lot and people go to work sick all the time and infect others. While the employer can’t fire people for being on sick leave too long there’s always a chance that they’ll get rid of such a person at another opportunity.

[AmazonGrace]

Narrator: 

 

Allow us to find the crime also sounds a lot like he wants to make something up.

[AmazonGrace]

Happy New Year!

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/12/29/nation/ny-prosecutor-hires-forensic-accounting-firm-probe-trump-escalates/?outputType=amp

[GreyhoundFan]

11 hours ago, 47of74 said:

All the above suggestions on a continuous loop.  Along with continuous clips of Olbermann calling out Republicans.

Don't forget Hillary Clinton speeches.

 

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I think there are a couple of things that prevent you from having a working system that ensures everyone has access to affordable healthcare and paid sick- and maternity leave. The main ones are:

- politics being influenced by lobbyists/ donors in such a way that big pharma can essentially buy policies— and it’s legal

<snip>

- Americans have been fed lies for decades about the actual cost of universal healthcare and other basic humanitarian regulations such as sick leave, maternity (and paternity) leave, minimum wages (high enough to ensure a very basic standard of living) and education. These lies have been internalized by the American public, and many people think it’s all too costly, they will be paying for other people who don’t want to work and the system will be fraudulently taken advantage of. People believe that anything that is labeled as socialism is per definition evil instead of simply taking care of basic needs and human rights. Because, and bear with me because this may be a radical thought for America, ensuring your citizens are capable of working and contributing to society is actually the smart thing to do in a capitalist economy. The wellbeing of a country’s inhabitants should be the main focus, not that of companies and rich donors.

What my point actually boils down to is that big companies and donors are controlling the narrative. Get rid of their ability to influence politics and essentially writing policies, and basic healthcare, childcare, education, infrastructure and so much more is within easy reach. 

Until Americans understand that healthcare should not be a for-profit industry, we have no hope of things improving. 

I also feel that the root of a large chunk of poor white people's issue with government managed healthcare is that many (but not all) are racist, either consciously or subconsciously,  and will never agree to a system where minorities are perceived to get the same or better than they have. When the Affordable Care Act was being debated and passed into law, so many people insisted on calling it Obamacare. That ensured that racists would never accept it. I remember seeing a story on a news program right after Twitler was inaugurated and McTurtle/Lyan were trying to pass the repug "skinny" health bill. The reporter asked people what they thought about different health issues (pre-existing condition coverage, no yearly or lifetime maximums, guaranteed coverage, no or minimum cost vaccines, no cost physicals, no cost birth control, etc), every person interviewed was gung-ho in favor it it. When they were informed that plan was what they were calling Obamacare, many recoiled and said that they were against it. Dumbasses. They just couldn't be in favor of something because it was associated with Obama.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s big policy win: Stronger showers, faster dishwashers. It’s something almost no one asked for."

Quote

President Trump was on a roll, standing before an adoring crowd in Carson City, Nev., just a couple of weeks before the 2020 election, and letting loose with a favorite campaign-trail complaint: Dishwashers don’t work like they used to. Shower heads dribble. Toilets are slow.

It was hard to tell how seriously to take Trump. The topic was light. It wasn’t tax cuts or covid-19. The crowd cheered and laughed as he talked. Trump teased that he really shouldn’t even be talking about “the fact that people have to flush their toilet 15 times.” But showers were the worst, he said.

“No water comes out. And me, I want that hair to be so beautiful,” he said.

A few days later, the Trump administration rolled back long-standing rules for dishwashers to allow them to consume unlimited amounts of water and energy. Then in late December, the Department of Energy announced it had changed the rules for shower heads and washing machines to allow the water to really pour out.

Trump won’t get his southern border wall finished before he leaves office. Obamacare has not been repealed. “Infrastructure week” never came. And while he has notched some notable policy wins, such as immigration limits, it is Trump’s push to deregulate common household appliances that remains a puzzling policy success.

Last summer, Trump described his push as aimed at “bringing back consumer choice in home appliances.” He was echoed by Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette this month when he said in a release that the administration’s rule changes “affirmed its commitment to reducing regulatory burdens and safeguarding consumer choice.”

But almost no one was asking for these choices.

Consumers were not clamoring. Manufacturers of shower heads and dishwashers found themselves in the unusual spot of mostly opposing the proposed changes, saying there was no need. Consumer and environmental advocacy groups objected, arguing the changes were costly and wasteful. Product testing firms cast doubt on the purported benefits of the proposals.

“It was a regulatory solution in search of a problem — a problem that doesn’t really exist,” said Kerry Stackpole, executive director of Plumbing Manufacturers International, a leading trade group.

One of the few cheerleaders for the new rules was the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Between the dishwasher rule and the two other ones that came out, we think it’s nice that Washington is finally doing things that will stop consumers from being soaked,” said Sam Kazman, the conservative-leaning advocacy group’s general counsel.

Trump was targeting water and energy regulations that had been on the books for decades in some cases, since Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. President Barack Obama’s administration made changes to some of the regulations. But the rules were a rare area where conservationists and manufacturers shared broad agreement on the goal of saving water and energy.

At first, when most of the new regulations were introduced in the 1990s, companies struggled to create efficient products that performed well. It wasn’t easy to slash water use in shower heads by 30 percent or toilets by more than half without creating problems. Then the engineers and designers went to work.

Today, product testing groups say, these appliances by and large work better than ever.

But then Trump began criticizing them.

“Anybody have a new dishwasher?” Trump asked the crowd at a campaign rally in Milwaukee last January. “I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. It's worthless. They give you so little water.”

“So, shower heads,” Trump said at the White House in July. “You take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair — I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect.”

Trump seemed to have found a topic with broad appeal.

“It became a regular riff in the last 12 months,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a consumer and environmental advocacy group. “It sent off a fervor at the agencies.”

DeLaski said he could imagine agency staff wondering, “Now what do we do?”

This was different from another product Trump targeted for abuse: lightbulbs.

Trump complained energy-efficient lightbulbs made him look orange. In late 2019, his administration blocked an energy-efficiency rule that would have banned the sale of most halogen and incandescent bulbs on Jan. 1, 2020.

But the new rules also had faced opposition from the lighting industry. And consumers, too, had concerns about the disappearance of incandescent bulbs.

Trump’s problems with shower heads and dishwashers seemed to be shared by a much narrower audience.

“The marketplace was not asking for this,” Stackpole said.

Trump’s administration also couldn’t just create new efficiency standards. The rules were contained in laws passed by Congress. So his administration was forced to nibble around the edges.

Policy surrounding dishwashers was the long-running effort. The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a petition in 2018 asking the government to allow for a new, faster class of dishwashers. The stated goal was a cycle time under one hour. And that could be achieved by lifting caps on water use, according to the petition.

Dishwasher makers objected, arguing customers weren’t asking for this. They also pointed out that the one-hour option could be found on almost all dishwashers shipped since 2017.

But the Department of Energy passed a rule allowing for this new class of dishwashers in October.

A similar rule was passed for laundry washers and dryers in December.

The Trump administration’s new shower head rule didn’t simply permit unlimited amounts of water. Shower heads were still capped at 2.5 gallons per minute. Instead, the agency offered a new interpretation of existing rules, stating that water flow should be measured by each shower head, not the total for a shower stall. So multiple shower heads could be used together to put out more water.

A shower with an overhead rainfall head and a separate shower sprayer could put out 5 gallons per minute, for example.

One popular item is what the industry calls an octopus shower head, with at least three heads tied together — even eight heads. The old rules limited that kind of shower head’s entire output to 2.5 gallons per minute. The new rules allow for 7.5 gallons per minute with three heads.

That would empty a residential hot-water heater pretty fast, said Stackpole.

“And you’ll feel like you’re drowning,” he said.

With the term winding down, the Trump administration has showed no signs of rolling back rules for water faucets or toilets, advocacy groups said.

Trump’s talk of toilets was the part of his appliance complaints where his audience laughed, and the president liked to accuse the media of paying too much attention. Federal rules limit toilets to 1.6 gallons per flush, down from 3.5 or even 5 gallons per flush. Some states have set even stricter limits to conserve water.

But a new federal toilet rule appears likely to be left unfinished when Trump leaves office.

 

[AmazonGrace]

It makes sense that he is interested in shower heads  because he is a douche

[Xan]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s big policy win: Stronger showers, faster dishwashers. It’s something almost no one asked for."

 

All this was really just about the shower heads in HIS showers.  He wants to have his shower and toilet use more water and, under old regulations, he couldn't.  Now, he can use multiple shower heads and use 8-10 gallons of water per minute.  This wasn't ever about improving things for anyone else.  This was just for him.

[AmazonGrace]

1 minute ago, Xan said:

All this was really just about the shower heads in HIS showers.  He wants to have his shower and toilet use more water and, under old regulations, he couldn't.  Now, he can use multiple shower heads and use 8-10 gallons of water per minute.  This wasn't ever about improving things for anyone else.  This was just for him.

And why the heck couldn't he install a showerhead just like he wants it, it's not like he cares about any other rules.

[Xan]

Just now, AmazonGrace said:

And why the heck couldn't he install a showerhead just like he wants it, it's not like he cares about any other rules.

Of course he could.  But if he got a licensed plumber to do it or was replacing shower heads that would be inspected (for example at Mar-a-lago) he'd not be allowed to do it.  Easier to change the rules for everybody so he gets what he wants without going to the trouble and expense of bribing a plumber.

[AmazonGrace]

It probably takes a pressure washer to scrub all that orange goo off him.

[Alisamer]

You know, I figured out what his big push for his next term was going to be! 

Water heaters! 

Since these new shower head regulations will empty most water heaters in minutes, his next schtick would be about how there's not enough hot water, or not hot enough water, and how something needs to be done about that.

I'm just thankful to have hot water. My water heater was having to be reset twice a week for ages, but I finally replaced the thermostats. It cost $40 and took like 10 minutes. I should have done it forever ago.

(Also, my furnace is fixed! I'm having a much more comfortable winter than I expected.)

[fraurosena]

Of course Trump is still delusional about the election results.

Good to see Twitter is boldly pointing out who actually won. Wanna bet this is why Trump wants to repeal section 230?

[GreyhoundFan]

42 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

It probably takes a pressure washer to scrub all that orange goo off him.

Malaria could just roll him to a self service car wash, they have high pressure water, plus scrub brushes:

[AmazonGrace]

Okay in the interests of complete accuracy, Brad Raffenberger does have a brother but not Ron.

Somebody named Ron Raffenberger is employed by Huawei. Of course everyone with the same last name must be brothers.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9098259/Trump-claims-Brad-Raffenspergers-brother-working-China-despite-not-having-brother.html

[church_of_dog]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s big policy win: Stronger showers, faster dishwashers. It’s something almost no one asked for."

 

I think I see where he's aiming at -- in denial of the likelihood he will end up in prison, or perhaps this is his plan after escaping to whichever non-extradition country, DJT is planning a new business in partnership with Mike Lindell:  "MyPlumbing". 

(raunchy verbal associations notwithstanding, and possibly intentional) 

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course.

 

[livinginthelight]

Apparently he's not even going to be there. He's coming back before the party in order to be a presence in Washington. Probably trying to put pressure on Pence.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/politics/trump-returning-to-washington-early/index.html

Edited December 31, 2020 by livinginthelight

[Howl]

I was wrong! I thought Trump would not come back to DC, but now he's coming back early.  I do believe that in his own mind, he still believes he has a chance to "win" the election.  How pathetic is that?

Pence will be in Vail through New Year's Day and maybe longer.  You can bet that he'd rather chew nails than come back to DC and be screamed at by Trump to changed the election results. 

He was scheduled to head to the middle east immediately after the Jan. 6 vote certifying the election was completed, but that trip has been cancelled. 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Howl

[fraurosena]

42 minutes ago, Howl said:

He was scheduled to head to the middle east immediately after the Jan. 6 vote certifying the election was completed, but that trip has been cancelled. 

What, the Middle East knows his usefulness is gone now and they said don’t bother?

[AmazonGrace]

4 hours ago, livinginthelight said:

Apparently he's not even going to be there. He's coming back before the party in order to be a presence in Washington. Probably trying to put pressure on Pence.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/politics/trump-returning-to-washington-early/index.html

Quote

Before leaving for Palm Beach, he learned of Vice President Mike Pence's role in the certification proceedings on Capitol Hill, which is mostly ceremonial. As he was flying to Florida for his vacation, Trump retweeted a call from one of his supporters for Pence to refuse to ratify the Electoral College count on January 6.

Isn't Pence's role in the Constitution? And Trump just learned about it? 

I thought he said he knows the political system better than anybody.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

10 hours ago, livinginthelight said:

Apparently he's not even going to be there. He's coming back before the party in order to be a presence in Washington. Probably trying to put pressure on Pence.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/politics/trump-returning-to-washington-early/index.html

I thought Pence was in Vail through the weekend.

 

8 hours ago, Howl said:

I was wrong! I thought Trump would not come back to DC, but now he's coming back early.  I do believe that in his own mind, he still believes he has a chance to "win" the election.  How pathetic is that?

Pence will be in Vail through New Year's Day and maybe longer.  You can bet that he'd rather chew nails than come back to DC and be screamed at by Trump to changed the election results. 

He was scheduled to head to the middle east immediately after the Jan. 6 vote certifying the election was completed, but that trip has been cancelled. 

Maybe he's coming back to give the Mar-a-Loco staff time to quickly undo Melania's redecoration efforts. Also, he has to take as many trips on Air Force 1, to enjoy the prestige and spend more taxpayer dollars before he has to start paying for his own trips.