America 2017 - what to expect?

No, there is no plan. At all. It is pure insanity. They are looking to privatize the medicare (senior citizen healthcare). My 59 year old mother (voted for trump) as well as myself (medicaid) are likely going to lose our health insurance. also, the republicans tried to gut the ethics committee. We are watching a far right wing assault on the american people. 30 million people are at risk of simply being kicked off their health care despite the fact that 70% of americans are against a full repeal of the ACA. The republican party is beholden to the needs of large corporate interests and not the American people.

Trump completely swindled his voters. Absolute immoral con artist. Senator Bernie Sanders Takes Donald Trump Tweet To Senate Floor | NBC News - YouTube

Well, I hope your mother doesn’t lose out - whatever happens.

I don’t really know too much about the details of Obamacare, but I do know some folks are v. unhappy with it. There is a branch of my family in America, and one of them (who is cancer survivor) voted for Mr T because he was totally enraged by this. But as I say, I don’t know too much about the ins and outs of it myself.

(The dude lives in Rhode Island, so maybe his vote didn’t make too much difference?? :_D)

BTW my sister is actually over there visiting some people right now. She is going to be in New York city for a few days as well, and she swears she is going to visit the Trump Tower to get one of those red “Make America Great Again” caps for yours truly. (Literally, the only time I could wear it around here without getting funny looks would be after dark! :-0)

I can’t believe this. It’s like, fudge it, lets just stop pretending we have representative democracy. Ryan Passes Regulatory Rollback, Parties With Lobbyists

Define business friendly. By what I’ve seen with Carrier and Ford, it’s off to a somewhat decent start (at least with Ford). My fear is with him being a Baby Boomer combined with a wasteful spender as a businessman will contribute to wasteful spending in the government.

He’s demonstrated to be very pro business, but in the sense he will give tax breaks to the wealthy first. We’ve learned here in the U.S. that wealth doesn’t trickle down to us peasants.

Economically he was easily the most sound candidate

How so? He’s reckless with money. He went bankrupt 4 times in the past 3 decades. That’s a lot.

Should I also mention his diploma mill scam?

Trump like a lot of Republicans is a person I don’t mind personally but dislike politically. So I guess I will round up to the ‘love him’ category.

“…Trump like a lot of Republicans is a person I don’t mind personally but dislike politically. So I guess I will round up to the ‘love him’ category…”

I like that comment. Politics shouldn’t be about personal animus, IMO.

I post some right-of-centre opinions here, and stuff. But here’s a thing that you guys may not guess. I have a sister who is a card-carrying member of the British Labour Party and an enthusiastic follower of Jeremy Corbyn! (That’s literally true, BTW) And we get along fine.

(She is the kind of “Socialist” who flies business class…but hey, these guys have a whole different thought process…)

“Ms. Conway’s quote is a glimpse into the heart of darkness that a Trump presidency portends. She wants us to swallow Mr. Trump’s reality without question. To accept only what he says now — not what he said then — over the evidence seen and heard by our own eyes and ears. She wants us overcome the dissonance by looking for the ‘truth’ in his heart.”
“The truth is getting harder to see in the flickering gaslight of Mr. Trump’s America, but it’s there. Not ‘in his heart,’ or out of his mouth, no matter how much this man and his minions say otherwise.”
Trump, Trapped in His Lies, Keeps Lying. Sad! Opinion | Trump, Trapped in His Lies, Keeps Lying. Sad! - The New York Times

The above comments cannot be associated with any sort of hysteria, in my opinion.

The NYT - scrupulously unbiased reporters no doubt. Not everyone agrees with them though.

Piers Morgan wrote:
"Meryl, I still love you dearly, but you had a chance to bring your country together last night and you blew it. "

I remember that he has been a big fan of Donald Trump. I think the president-elect is not trying to bring the country together. The more he tweets, the more he divides the people and gives away his stupidity.

Piers Morgan also wrote:
“My friend Donald is not the new Hitler. He is a swaggering, shameless braggart… who might just make America great again”

Piers Morgan is very far indeed from being a friend of the American right! It’s true he is a (personal) friend of Donald Trump, but he has also attacked some of his proposed policies in print - such as the so called Muslim-ban, for example.

Perhaps it is precisely because he is a personal friend of DT that he refuses to go along uncritically with the fawning saccharine adulation towards this latest character attack? I think he makes some valid points:

  1. There is video evidence from the past showing Trump making the same hand gesture when he was talking about other people who (unlike this journalist) are not disabled in any way.

  2. The journalist in question is not some poor little victim - he is a powerful and well connected person with a big platform to lash out at people he doesn’t like (including Trump.)

  3. It is laughable for Hollywood stars to engage in moral posturing, considering the immorality that pervades so much of their industry. They are happy to celebrate Roman Polanski aren’t they? Yes, Polanski is a creative genius - I know that! But he is also a fugitive from US justice with a conviction for drugging and anally raping a 13-year old girl! Where is their moral outrage about that!?

  4. They also shouldn’t be sneering at ordinary Americans - most of whom couldn’t begin to dream about the privileged and massively over-rewarded kind of life that these stars enjoy.

(And I don’t even like Piers Morgan much…)

LAWRENCE DOWNES wrote:
“It happened at a speech in 2015 in South Carolina. Mr. Trump’s target was Serge Kovaleski, of The Times, who has arthrogryposis, a condition that leaves his right arm and hand bent and rigid. ‘You ought to see this guy,’ Mr. Trump told his audience, flailing his own right arm and hand in the air, making spastic movements, disgracing himself. The act was contemptible, and in a way unbelievable: a future president showing the maturity and schoolyard viciousness of an 8-year-old.”
Trump, Trapped in His Lies, Keeps Lying. Sad! http://nyti.ms/2jnfZ9w

Trump Mocks Reporter’s Disability, Claims They Never Met. Met Him 12 Times

‪Meryl Streep was right. Donald Trump did mock a disabled reporter. http://wpo.st/b7kQ2‬

PIERS MORGAN wrote:

“…Trump has always furiously denied – and has again today on Twitter - he was mocking the reporter’s disability and a Conservative website produced video evidence of numerous other instances where he made the exact same gesture to fully able-bodied people when attacking them. (See here Donald Trump's 'impression' of a disabled reporter may have been his 'default' put down | Daily Mail Online and decide for yourself)…”

I think he’s right - people should decide for themselves.

(I accept that the video of him attacking Kovaleski doesn’t look good. But I don’t believe people are being given both sides of the story by the NYT.)

Piers Morgan’s opinions fall firmly into the “who cares” bin of my thinking folder.

Let’s just hope that he is impeached sooner rather than later… before he gets us all killed.

Oh, I’m no admirer of Piers Morgan! I think he can be a total **** in fact. (He was way over the line with a young mother he recently interviewed on British TV - reducing her to tears pretty much.)

I’m not exactly a fan of The Donald either. But I do think that a lot of the MSM coverage of him has been crassly one-sided. This Kovaleski matter is an example of that. Now, it may be that he really was mocking his disability - which is a truly disgraceful thing to do. But there must be an element of doubt, seeing that there are several videos of him making the same hand gesture about other people entirely - some from years ago. The folks at the NYT are certainly aware of this, but they just blank out any mention of it. As reporters they should at least provide some factual balance, IMO, and allow readers to decide for themselves. (They could still argue their opinion.)

Dude, come on. Trumps gonna go after anyone who criticizes him Regardless of facts or reality. This is so obvious. We elected a nutcase.

One thing is for sure: this Jared Kushner dude needs to steal his phone and change his Twitter password!

There are lots of issues we can disagree with: Economics, social issues, whatever. But one Issue where there is no debate and you cannot defend is the U.S. healthcare system. Everyone in this thread commenting outside the U.S. probably has heath coverage. In the U.S, medical expense is the number 1 cause of personal bankruptcy and 40,000 minimum people die every year because they couldn’t access or could not afford to pay for their health insurance. Now the republicans, without an alternative, are simply going to remove 30 million from healthcare. There is no way to defend this no matter how conservative you are.