House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) dropped a bombshell yesterday when he revealed that members of the Trump campaign staff – possibly including Trump himself – had their communications intercepted by US intelligence. The surveillance was likely undertaken under expanded spying permission granted by section 702 of the post-9/11 FISA amendments. This provision enables the NSA to listen in to and keep information from phone calls of US citizens as long as the person on the other end is believed to be a non-US citizen overseas. The possibilities for abusing this expanded authority for political or other gain are endless and this may be what is behind the latest revelations. Politicians don’t mind when we are spied on by the government, but they scream loudest when they are the victims. What’s the solution? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
I am so happy Ron Paul mentioned whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, and pointed out that people criticized Snowden for not going to the government with his findings. Well, Montgomery got immunity, went to the FBI (who was DOING the spying!) and was totally ignored. What makes anyone think Snowden would have been treated any differently? With any luck, Trump might SUGGEST that we get rid of the Patriot Act, now that he has seen that they have used loopholes to get around the idea of not spying on US citizens. The foreign person that allowed them to listen in on Trump provided NO intelligence, but of course they didn’t care – they had their legal cover to continue to listen to Trump.
I’m very interested in this story too. There is a big gap between Larry Klayman’s description of Dennis Montgomery – http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/fbi-director-comey-must-be-questioned-by-nunes-at-house-inte and what is publicly known about Montgomery’s history – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_L._Montgomery He is known as a fraudster who ripped off the US govt. with some ridiculous scams. That said, Klayman is going to war here for an overall good cause and having success so far – http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/court-declares-nsa-spying-program-unconstitutional-and-grant I’m thinking that perhaps he see is hoping for a big class action suit where he can get people like Russ Tice and William Binney as good character witnesses and combine their testimony about what they saw with the old documents that Montgomery has a legal right to show from his own squirrely past. The combo makes a stronger case.
Trump read something the Brietbart batsh-t crazies tried to promote and he didn’t think of his shot at Obama being taken so seriously. It was wrong and was just another stupid remark out of Trump’s demented cakehole. Something roughly equivalent to his idea of Obama being a Muslim from Africa, or one of his many other silly remarks.
If the Repubs try long enough then they are certainly going to find something to back up Trump’s claim that it was true, even though it will only be remotely connected to the original charge against Obama.
Ron needs to try to rise above it.
Ron Paul has had it right for so long for so many years. Just think how much better our country would be if he had more influence over the years. There is not a big constituency for someone not wheeling and dealing in government goodies and handouts. Washington is largely about money and power and paying back critics. Someday the “funny money” won’t continue to have the confidence of the duped public and then reality will shock the world. If the digitalized and paper “dollar” collapsed tomorrow, a lot of the Democrat and Republican nonsense would got down with it I am not “hoping” for people to no longer believe in the Washington Santa Claus, but if that happens, the public will quit believing in a lot of other Washington fantasies, too. You are a great guy with a lot of courage, Dr. Paul!
“There is not a big constituency for someone not wheeling and dealing in government goodies and handouts.”
True. Which is why, of all the congresscritters from the Houston area, Ron Paul was the biggest pork-barrel wheeler-dealer of them all.
Ron Paul used the earmark system to insert his constituents’ wishes onto Federal spending bills that he voted against. Not sure how that makes him a wheeler-dealer. He didn’t sell his votes in exchange for favors.
Greedy capitalists have a hold on your country that is going to be very hard to break. Even Bernie Sanders would have likely failed because he still had some wrong ideas in the mix of the right ideas. And of course big money would have slaughtered him and his good ideas. But the encouragement comes from the fact that Trump had some good ideas that a lot of the people went for. It’s just that Trump never meant any of it and he lied his a-s off to get himself elected.
In short, the people were taken in by a billionaire corporate psychopath. Some of my other posts elaborate on the ‘right’ path the people have to choose the next time. And in fact, if things get much worse, they may be able to make the next time a lot shorter than 4 years from now.
Trump promised affordable health care insurance for all Americans. Trump promised lots of changes to socially responsible capitalism. But Trump lied about it all.
We’ll continue to talk about it.
He doesn’t have any ideas that lead in the right direction. It seems that no Americans do, with the exception of Bernie Sanders who was starting to get a part of it right. The way out of the mess is not down the libertarian road that Ron Paul halfheartedly promotes. Ron Paul failed with that agenda and it will always fail.
A fairly large faction of the American people saw an indication of the ‘way’ in some of Trump’s promises. He was promising ‘socially responsible capitalism’ in many of his platforms.
But they were all lies!
Imagine! Having hope in a corporate billionaire psychopath following through on socially responsibility for the people! Imagine!
Now is the time to think back on all that Trump promised to the little people who were conned into believing in him. Because many of the answers were there.
Here’s on example of how Trump was going to lead his country in the right direction to fix their problems. Remember how he promised good and affordable health care to all the people? Remember that?
Actually, from a non-adversarial MacKinderan geopolitical standpoint, Trump’s apparent strategy is quite sound.
Avoid clashing with Russia-China, reset the U.S. economy from the warfare-welfare dichotomy to a far more efficient and productive economy of industry, enterprise, and infrastructure development. Leverage all your legit advantages and put the U.S. first.
The Eurasian century is here, and petty attempts to derail it with direct military force and hybrid warfare are failing spectacularly.
F. William Engdahl covered much of this in New Asian Outlook, Oct. 4, 2016 “The Eurasian Century is Now Unstoppable”.
However, North America also fits Halford MacKinder’s textbook description of a geopolitical pivot; its not World Heartland sized but it is the North American continent.
That smaller size is an advantage; its potentially far more efficient than the World Heartland. Except for the crony capitalism problem, the worst economic model since Marxist-Leninism, North America is geographically built for global industry, trade, and finance and winning bigly huuge.
Isn’t the big failure of Trump’s health care plan enough to convince you that there’s nothing good coming from him? It failed not because it didn’t do anything for all the people who go without, it failed because it wasn’t rabid right, frothing at the mouth, hateful enough! It wasn’t good enough that it took health care away from 24,000,000 more people, it didn’t take health care away from enough people.
Actually, you said it in your first sentence. Trump’s APPARENT strategy was quite sound. But the real strategy isn’t and the campaign promises were all lies.
That doesn’t change the fact that Trump’s APPARENT strategy is quite sound and should not be forgotten in a tidal wave of Trump hate over the person.
The Trumpian movement is not about the Trumpist cult of personality for or against Donald Trump, its about the ideas that coalesced around him as the President elected more or less in opposition to neocon Deep Statism.
Trumpian would probably be called Jillian, if Jill Stein had been allowed to go viral and take the Presidency. However, the reality is Trump is President and Jill Stein finished in distant fourth place behind Gary “TPP-What’s an Aleppo” Johnson.
Obamacare was written by med insurance shysters for med insurance shysters; Rep-Obamacare lite obviously wasn’t going to fix things except maybe for the worse. As long as there’s a drop of blood to squeeze from Americans stone enough to prefer it over universal public health care, they’re going to get squeezed good and hard by a natural private crony capitalist monopoly.
If this is an example of a Trump defeat, then hey, he turned defeat into a win-win+win. Its unfixable, but, Democrats still own Obamacare, the so-called Rep ‘Freedom Caucus’ now also owns it, and American med insurance shysters are still stuck with making their corrupt scam work in the interim.
In the meantime Trump’s moving on, and is so far avoiding being railroaded into calling foreign leaders petty names. All warpaths lead to Moscow, whether from Kiev through Novorussiya, Or Damascus through Tehran, or Pyongyang through Beijing.
Sooner or later Trump will have to address that. The antiwar movement can’t be led to duck that question either as its somewhat more important than hating on Trump.
Obama tried for universal, singlepayer healthcare for your people but his ACA was watered down to something the Republicans and their libertarian friends could destroy.
Why did you let them win against Obama. Didn’t you understand what was going on? If Obama succeeded then the Republican would have lost one of their major political platforms and that would forever destroy their credibility.
Isn’t it now pretty obvious that’s what your country needs as at least a start to dismantling your brand of greedy capitalism? Did it really matter that much that Obama was a black guy? He was still trying to do the right thing for everybody.
And now isn’t it pretty obvious that Trump’s supporters mostly want that which he took away from Obama? Now that Trump has doublecrossed them? The only thing the hateful pigs saw wrong with Obamacare is that it had the black guy’s name on it. Now they don’t get it with the white guy’s name on it.
“Obama tried for universal, singlepayer healthcare for your people”
In your imagination, perhaps. In real life, he campaigned from the very beginning on being AGAINST single payer and for running health care benefits through employers and individual insurance mandates.
https://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/04/18/voters-see-very-different-healthcare-plans-from-obama-clinton-and-mccain
Obama tried to do it right and the only right way is universal, single payer health care. Government is required if it’s going to be done right. It can’t be done for profit by private enterprise. Everybody except Americans understand that.
Canada’s is done for half the cost per capita. And the rest of the civilized world does it our way.
With good health care by government, everybody has to take part. That means everybody has to be forced to take it regardless of whether they want it or not.
That’s the way insurance works. It can’t work by enrolling all the good risks, and as well it can’t work by insuring all the bad risks.
There is no room in the real world for libertarians and their preferences when the rest of the people need health care to work. The only way libertarians can be excluded from the plan is if they are willing to go out and live in the wilderness and find their own way. Witch doctor healing is in vogue for them, as well as perhaps amputations by biting a bullet and using a Bowie knife. Wild berries will be their Cancer cure!
The lesson is over for today.
OK, so you have a video of Obama telling an audience he supports single-payer.
Now, point to so much as a single attempt by him to actually get single-payer.
You can’t, because he never made any such attempt. His announced plan, from the start, was to tinker with the existing system. What he ended up doing was implementing the Republican Nixon/Gingrich/Romney health care plan.
Thomas, you’re just running from the truth. No, Obama didn’t try and the reason why he didn’t try if because the idea was simply a non-starter. As was nearly everything decent Obama attempted to do. The plain truth is your country is fu–ed up and not in touch with reality.
And the proof I’m offering is that Trump said he would do that which Obama failed to do. Yes, he did say it! But it was a lie and would have been a completey hopeless cause anyway. It just can’t happen in your country. And now the proof comes home with a vengeance because the Repubs have f–k all! They can’t have of course because your country has been introduced to progress through the ACA and won’t turn back.
So on the bright side, in spite of your libertarian leanings, you are making it pretty apparent that you know what needs to happen. That’s good because that’s the main point I wanted to make.
It’s another offering of the proof of that which I said I would be pushing here on this site. Obama indeed was the fu–ing messiah, in a rhetorical way but not in the literal sense as the racist haters meant.
But then I notice that you said in another post. Or at least agreed with it: “There is not a big constituency for someone not wheeling and dealing in government goodies and handouts.”
So maybe you wouldn’t subscribe to single payer, universal health care anyway? Let me know?
I can’t not try.
As I’ve said more than once, single-payer would be better at a service-delivery level than either ObamaCare or the system that preceded it. But I’ll continue to fight for completely free market health care, which the US hasn’t had since the late 19th century and which is better than any other system, in ways including but not limited to not being immoral and not leading to mass murder.
I don’t know what you mean by a ‘service delivery’ level so explain if you feel motivated to do so.
I’m trying to come to some kind of understanding on what you mean when you say a free market or really just ‘private’ health care would be best. Honestly! And I’m no stranger to the concept that the free market regulates itself and the cost of everything. It’s just that it doesn’t in the real world. And the reason why it doesn’t with health care is because sick, injured, and even dying people can’t just go elsewhere if they don’t want to pay the going rate.
And so what I’m saying is that insurance companies don’t compete with other companies on cost. That’s just not the real world. Your country is experiencing the real world.
Government, with all it’s flaws, some real and some just imagined, can do it because there is no incentive for profit, with maybe the exception of higher compensation being asked for by those who administer the system. It’s negligible because the rest of the world’s countries are proving it is kept under control.
Once again we are left at an impasse on coming to any kind of conclusion because of your adherence to your ideals, instead of the reality of the situation. If we are to pursue this, and I’m more than willing, perhaps we could start by you telling me why private, for-profit insurance isn’t working. As in, some mechanism at work that is preventing the market from regulating itself to the point at which private health care would be affordable.
I just really could be missing a valid point you are trying to make?
In any case, your country has been set on the right track now with Obamacare, in that any changes to come are going to have to be made in a positive direction. Trump’s/Republican party failure has made that the reality. I’m thinking that the Repubs can kiss their as-es goodbye if they f–k with the people’s good too much in the future. Their only saving grace for a year down the road is in blaming Obamacare for the huge failure of the system. Really f–king nice they are willing to throw the people to the wolves!
I fail to see what a debate over markets versus socialism in healthcare has to do with the topics covered at Antiwar.com.
The US healthcare system has been going downhill with every government intervention since the late 19th century, starting with guild socialism/medical licensure and proceeding through the massive post-WWII Veterans Administration apparatus, Medicare, Medicaid, Nixon’s HMO law and Obama’s giant corporate welfare package, the ACA.
Personally I think that just going plain vanilla single payer is attractive as a momentary fix for a really bad system. But it still leads eventually to an even worse system. I guess I could just be greedy and support single payer because it would better for me, and who cares if my grandchildren starve or get shot in a dsytopian end-game? But I kind of think I’ll LIKE my grandchildren when they get here, and and would prefer to leave them something other than a socialist hellhole.
It has nothing to do with antiwar directly. I won’t get into the indirect connection unless you want to talk about it here on this site.
Reality is that single payer systems are working and have been working for nearly a hundred years in some countries. I don’t see them collapsing in your great, great, great grandchildrens’ lifetimes. I see a much bigger chance of your grandchildren not making it to adulthood if you don’t fix your mess.
But that’s not my business to care about.
Huh? I always figured Obamacare was one of Obama’s smarter, if more cynical moves; he took those responsible for the U.S. private health care debacle and said, OK, here, you make it work.
Unfortunately, Obama ended up staking his brand on the thing. When under Trump, outright repeal became repeal and replace, Trump neatly sidestepped that major trap and avoided putting his brand on the line, while keeping blame where it belonged. Race had nothing to do with it.
At no time was the health care racket ever endangered by Obama. Trump probably wants to fix it if only for ego’s sake, but can’t get at it; its still too deep into the swamp. Charles Hugh Smith recently wrote an article about how “U.S. Health Care is Completely Broken” from the perspective of the ‘fraud triangle’, a graphical explanation of workplace fraud.
The fraud triangle was developed by American sociologist and criminologist Donald R. Cressey, a specialist in white collar crime. It aptly fits American healthcare and explains why its inherently unfixable.
Universal single payer health care is far better, and is the obvious endgame, but still no panacea. Public health care still requires the political will to combat fraud, waste and balance cost containment with quality service. Its still a monopoly without free market cost discovery, a clumsy mechanism which has proven unworkable anyway if the U.S. model is any guidance.
Canada, for example, cuts out a lot of middlemen and saves on ‘administrative costs’. While great for most immediate and life threatening emergencies, Canadian health care has long waiting lists for elective treatment. Hi-tech care is far from the ideal of being both cutting edge and universally, immediately accessible.
This creates stealth two-tier; the wealthiest Canadians go to the U.S., and the merely rich, go to Mexico, for advanced elective care.
There’s some truth in your last sentence. But it’s a truth that is being exaggerated by those who hold private health care near and dear. In actual practice it’s so minimal that it’s almost an untruth. So be it, think what you like on the question.
Read what I’ve said to Thomas in my reply of today on how Obama wanted the right thing but knew it could never happen.
Obama staked his brand on the ACA and succeeded as much as was possible under the circumstances. And that was a lot of success if viewed as setting the goal posts and not just in the results so far. Your country has had a taste of the real thing and it won’t turn back. It’s unlikely that it’s going to ever be possible to put Obamacare to bed completely.
And so the reality of the situation is, the Republicans can only improve on the ACA because the people won’t tolerate anything else. And the Republicans can’t improve on it because improvement flies directly in the face of private, for profit health care.
Take you time coming to terms with reality. It’s only your fellow Americans and perhaps some of your loved ones who will be doing the hurting and the dieing.
Um, we don’t seem to have any fundamental disagreements as to the positive merits of universal public health care, with the only difference being the level of purism.
The people who were happy with their private insurance were thinking of their loved ones not hurting and dying because they have to pay for poor peoples’ insurance while enduring reduced and more expensive coverage.
There is private health care even in Canada; you can easily look it up in quick summaries such as Canadian-healthcare .org. Private insurance exists as a top-up to basic care. Medical tourism is also a thing in Canada.
Health insurance premiums were already rising before Obamacare. There are sound arguments that Obamacare made things worse, better, or made no difference, but the bottom line seems to always be the health of the health insurance industry. Rising health care costs is a worldwide phenomenon, partly due to an aging global population.
There are also issues such as tech innovations where the profit motive does not always appear obstructionist, but penny-pinching is. For example, MRIs are a big deal in Canada, but routine in the U.S. and elsewhere. Getting MRIs for ‘free’ doesn’t help those at the end of a non-negotiable year-long waiting list, but those with good insurance can get a ~US$ 600 test within 48 hours.
MRIs are over the long term, simply the better diagnostic tool but it wasn’t Canadian Medicare that pioneered their ubiquity. The need to provide the best care plan in a very large competitive environment perhaps did have some positive outcomes in the U.S..
The reality is all health care is for-profit; its only a question of who
pays, who gets paid, and how much. No-one works for free, and the
bottom line is making sure its genuinely useful work relevant to health care that is fairly paid for. ‘Genuinely useful’ and ‘fair’ tend to be very negotiable terms, unfortunately.
Bill Clinton and Carter tried to bring about a system like Colorado has, with Medicaid for all. On a sliding scale, the more actual wealth you have determines what is subsidized for your personal situation.
But the public perception of who tried first is skewed and usually named after the executive who got it going. There’s a cell phone subsidy everybody calls the Obamaphone, but it was proposed by George HW and put in place by Clinton. And the term Hooverville of course gets denounced if spoken in the Far Right places.
True enough, but naming names usually just ends up as a cover for the real problem; private health insurance. Bloomberg also reports that the GOP is thinking about reintroducing an Obamacare vote. Assuming Trump is probably still being spied upon, the transcripts of his reaction would be interesting if improper reading.
Its much easier to study Canadian medicare. The main opponents to Medicare had been the doctors, who could be bought off with a decent fee schedule. Private clinics have only recently began to become pervasive enough to challenge the status quo. Private health insurance was never directly challenged and continued to exist as a top-up to public ‘primary care’. It avoids the problem of the insurance industry needing everyone on board; often those least likely to need care but most able to pay, top up. Everything is voluntary; even the Provinces may opt out at their political discretion.
Studying American health care reform is mind-numbing.
1990s Clintoncare is best remembered for the crater it left going down, but seemed mostly hung up on insurance companies not liking caps on premiums, and people who had insurance, liking their coverage as was. Obamacare hate is again focused on coverage changes, particularly higher rates and changed programs. ColoradoCare Amemdment 69 went down in flames in November, and only had the overt support of Bernie Sanders.
Yet even now under Obamacare, the insurance companies can’t make it work without Federal subsidies, ie.; the taxpayer’s money.
It should be interesting to see what Trump does about the May 22 deadline for those subsidies, but realistically insurance companies are unlikely to tolerate being punted from their place at the trough. Their whole-hoggish place at the trough very much appears to be the main obstacle.
If Obamacare has any merits, its that it does at least highlight the role of private insurers even if discussion does tend to focus on the personalities.
It’s been decades since most Americans had medical insurance. HMO/PPO programs are not insurance, they’re pre-paid care.
… Offered by med insurance companies…
Health Maintenance Organizations, Preferred Provider Organizations, Exclusive Provider Organizations are all variations on the same theme of health insurance; pay a premium and get some service (minus the out-of-pocket deductible) if you ever need it. And you will.
In that sense its all prepaid. Even HMOs sometimes have a small deductible, but its more often called a ‘copayment’, similar to a public healthcare’s (very much opposed) nominal user fee.
The only major non-insurance coverage are Health Care Sharing Ministries, where a church coordinates member pooling for bigger individual expenses, but patients pay for smaller ones themselves. There are religion-based preconditions for membership, and HCSMs are specifically exempted under the ACA and not required to give minimum essential coverage.
Compared to the simplicity of universal public health care, private insurance schemes carry more middleman getting their cut. Unless one considers a government bureaucrat a middleman. Its still about who holds power over people’s money; state, church or private insurers in a monopoly situation.