I really want tax reform to hit this year. But can you really do tax reform without first understanding the impact of healthcare reform? So in a way I get it but if I had to pick one, I would go with tax reform.

I hear tax reform is easy. Throw away the book and just make it the same across the board.

Tax reform is way more difficult than it may appear. Inherently, reform means raising some taxes to cut other taxes, and nobody is going to willingly be the one that has their taxes raised. The border adjustment tax is already being hammered by retailers and the Kochs.

It probably wouldn't be hard to pass a simple rate reduction, but that isn't going to help Trump politically. It's really difficult to figure out a tax reform package that can pass and will be broadly popular.

Not to mention problems with the Byrd rule in the senate that will almost certainly give the bill a ten year expiration date.

I don't see a good way forward for him on health care. It seems that any bill that would please the freedom caucus is going to have to get rid of the pre-existing conditions guarantee and there's no way that's going to be palatable to the general public (and thus moderate Republicans).

I'm sure tax reform will be just as easy as health care reform was...

I guess NATO is not obsolete anymore (or at least until you are not standing next to the Secretary-General of NATO)

Trump reverses on NATO: ‘It’s no longer obsolete’ - POLITICO

Oh and China is not a currency manipulator as he promised he would proclaim on Day 1.

TBF there is some agreement where countries will spend 2% of GDP by x date. Apparently there are many that spend below that. So he did accomplish something

Where x I believe is 2020(maybe 25) and where the agreement is not something he put in place, it was there already. He just said a lot of stupid that contradicted it.

So no. He didn't accomplish anything but say silly uninformed things while confusing both our allies and enemies on what America's stance is on any given day. We are the joke of the world.

I guess this is good? From the Wall Street Journal.

Seems to think everything is easy until someone talks to him for ten minutes telling him it's not.

Fortunately I don't link my ego to how the world views my country. Maybe you should try that?

It's not nearly as complex as it's been devolved into.

Flat. Period.

Anything else is wrong, period.

It's not an ego thing. It's a geopolitical thing. As much as these nationalist idiots think focusing on America and ignoring everything outside the borders is the right move, that's not how the world works.

And now lets return to the real world

I'm there, come on over, there's room.

You can't drag around dead weight forever without it taking a toll, that's cold hard reality. Sooner or later, it's more than than the dwindling number of productives can carry.

It's time for that to be corrected. Period.

How utterly Christian of you (shakes head)

I missed that the hiring freeze has been revoked.

Best 13 weeks ever!

Plus, the german secretary of state among others has gone on record saying that such a agreement to definitely reach 2% does not exist but more a agreement to try and see if it isn't possible to get there. In a nice little quote : "I would not even know where to put all the aircraft-carriers we would need to build in order to spent that amount of money"

I kinda fail to see how hardware or manpower in terms of a massive army is going to make a lick of difference against the kind of threat "we" have to deal with.

So then you feel the same way about SS tax as well, taxing all revenue not just your first $xx. Flat, period?

You can throw "How Christian of you around", but at what point do we all start suffering? Is that Christian? We all suffer in this world?

You do know that there a a lot of people out there scamming the system, right?
I can tell you lots of stories of people that are lazy scamming the country for disability. Those are the drain on the system.
Also, government naturally expands if you dont keep it in check. And that begins to drain the system.

Im all for helping people. But let us not bring Christianity into it. We are a society of takers. And the amount of takers are starting to tip the balance.

The rich have never controlled a greater proportion of the national wealth or the national income. In what way is the balance tipping?

There's also widespread people on Wallstreet scamming the system and they have a much, much more significant impact on our economy. Why are we focused on a very small percentage of people that have almost no impact as opposed to those that are truly hurting things?

Because they're black/hispanic/other. Why do we keep pretending that's not the reason why people don't like the "freeloaders?"

Christian charity doesn't apply to something taken by force.

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"

I think some of you could stand to take 5 minutes out of your day and head to your local community health clinic for the under/uninsured. Maybe give some of the 20+ folks constantly waiting for services every hour of every day equal time versus the evil system-scammers, whose general existence you've only seen on paper?

I've been forced into those places once or twice, and I can tell you with complete confidence that nobody is happy to be there. Lost somewhere in the discussion between liberal coddling and conservative bootstrapping is the fact that simply being part of the institutionalized poor is hard and depressing work.

As bad as community clinics can be, try spending an hour in the waiting room at your local DHS Family Services. Imagine DMV with 1000% more bawling children and mentally ill. Ever walked past a half-way house, and taken a good long look at the lobby? If you're on any kind of 'assistance' these are the kind of places where you spend countless hours of your day, which the general public doesn't have to account for in the course of their lives. These places are without fail, over-packed, dingy and grey, and filled with the slowest most uncaring workers the government could find. To collect that assistance you'll need to spend tens of hours of every week in places like that, and if you've got issues with drug use or a criminal past, you can double or triple those hours.

The conservative nightmare of massive gangs of welfare deadbeats who enjoy frivolous lives siphoned off of public generosity ignores just how much hard work it takes to be part of the assisted-poor, while the liberals are content to ignore how much of those welfare resources are spent doing absolutely nothing of consequence. Frankly, If you haven't spent any time being part of the 'assisted' poor in modern America, then I don't think you have even the slightest bearing on which to judge those folks.

Not interested in judging them.

VERY interested in judging control of how my money is taken from me & redistributed.

Horseshit.

If you think I have any more interest in having money taken out of my pocket for a white guy/gal then you're horribly mistaken.

I guess we should start prepping now ...

If Trump does this, I don't think a small strike will do much other than piss off the crazy kid and escalate it even more. Beats me how China will react.

U.S. May Launch Strike If North Korea Reaches For Nuclear Trigger - NBC News

Have you refused any & all government benefits (including tax credits & financial aid for college) for your child & his care in the past, or is this the kind of core passion that extends only to other folks' benefits and/or your money?

My brother in law is as white as they come.

So are we about to bomb North Korea?

Is this going to be an every other weekend type thing for Trump? In a way, I'm okay with this, the president deserves as much relaxation as possible but just seems bad optics to me.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/politi...ago/index.html

If so, RIP Seoul

I hear the chocolate cake is too good to go a fortnight without.

At least Samsung would randomly stop making things explode.

And given the Presidential situation over there, its probably the worst time for the US to do anything in the area, while still the best time for NK to mess around.

For as many times as Trump has said he's learned something, or he didn't know how hard something is, I don't think its the best time to go around trying to bomb places that at least have the possibility of already having nukes.

I can't answer the tax credit question since I didn't do the form, no clue what was/wasn't filed. I stay as far away from that crap as possible to try to manage my blood pressure.

And no, not a dime in governmental financial aid for college (and certainly none prior to that), private funds or private scholarships has paid that (unless you want to count the state of MS contributions to the university's electrical bills I guess).

I don't consider it your responsibility to send my child to school any more than I consider sending yours to be mine.

Any more fucking questions?

edit to add: And if they'll flatten the tax rate to what's fair, I'd gladly waive any & all deductions, credits, or whatever other mumbo jumbo you want to add to the list. I haven't done the personal math on that because I don't care what it comes out to ... it's about what's right. Period.

some questions....

1. Do we believe that they have missiles accurate enough to even hit Seoul?
2. If they did it with bombers, wouldn't we have fighters/AA ready to intercept?
3. If you blew up a plane with a nuke on it, does the nuke blow up?

Except that he and his cronies screamed incessantly when Obama did it occasionally. Every other tweet was about Obama golfing and Obama vacations. I read something the other day about the cost, on this pace Trump will spend more federal dollars in 1 year than Obama did in 8 on vacations and golf. That does not include the $400k/day they are spending on their kid in NY. But hey, let's complain about food stamps.

I don't think we're just talking missiles/bombing here, they have an army of 6 million highly trained folks (even if the technology is probably shit) vs 500k in the South. Unless we're shipping the entirity of the US Army over there or getting serious support from other nations isn't there a serious danger they'd be in Seoul in weeks just in terms of conventional warfare alone?

I assumed "RIP Seoul" was a reference to them nuking it, not taking it via invasion.

I was referencing all of the artillery NK has trained on Seoul.

NK has artillery that can reach Seoul.

edit: Dammit, Cartman.

Theoretically possible (I think) but actually unlikely (I think).

A conventional explosion from, say, shooting down the aircraft would lack the precision needed for detonation.

There would have to be a deadman switch on the nuke to have it explode if a plane was shot down. External impacts wouldn't set one off. In any event, I don't think NK has made a nuke small enough to fit onto a plane.

If we're actually talking about action against NK I would hope it would be a surgical strike to remove the Kim's and take the head off the military command but that's got to be hugely shaky in terms of legality and what do you do with the regime change after that and the billions that will have to be spent bringing a large country out of the dark ages.

Anything short of that, yeesh. Unless it's with a commitment from China that they will actively support any action taken, we are talking about casualties unheard of since WW2 in terms of the damage they will do to the South and the number of US servicemen that are going to be needed to stop them.

Not saying doing nothing is the right action here either, but there's no doubt in my mind if the US just does a couple strikes to try and set the nuke program back 5 years they are going to do something really really stupid.

Though If anyone was batshit crazy enough to have a deadman switch on a nuke like that it would be North Korea.

I hope Trump & Co has thought thru this several steps ahead and wargame it vs Trump shooting from the hip.

It seems that Trump has pretty much committed to a red line which the crazy kid will probably cross this weekend. If so, there will be some sort of US response (because its a red line and Trump doesn't want it to come back to him ala Obama/Syria).

I think any military response we do (small, med, big), the crazy kid (who probably has a very deep bunker) can interpret it as an act of war. There are alot of civilians and US troops in the line of fire.

There are no good options now but once the crazy kid gets intercontinental nukes there will really be no good options then, so it might be better to resolve this once and for now in the next 4 years.

I don't have much faith in this, with tons of evidence pointing to him making a decision based on the last person to talk to him. I mean, look at what he said after talking to the Chinese leader about North Korea: “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy”

Donald Trump admits Xi Jinping gave him a history lesson on North Korea | The Independent

I think the action we will take against NK is China cutting off resources. That happens and NK folds like a broken lawn chair.

China probably won't do that to the extent or in the timeframe that we would want.

If Trump was able to negotiate something like that with China, his stock rises with me quite a bit.

Wouldn't he view that as much of an act of war as literally shooting at them and act out as well?

I'd like to think that Kim knows that if he shoots at us then he is done for, so he's not going to take any action to hasten that end.

If China cuts off aid and resources he's just as done for, although possibly over a longer time period. We're also not talking about a rational person here to begin with.

We drop a MOAB on the presidential palace, NK becomes a headless snake.

I think NK would capitulate to China. If Kim wants to stay in power, he needs China.

What does China get for a humanitarian crisis on its border and a possible war and nuclear fallout on the Korean peninsula?

A slightly better trade deal with the US that they totally wouldn't be able to get otherwise because they're dealing with a Master Negotiator in Trump.

Wasnt the term money manipulator? Or currency manipulator?

Notice how we backed off that statement? Stuff is happening between China and the US. Things your guy couldnt ever have hoped to do.

If Trump pulls China in, that goes along way to easing world tensions.

I love everything about this post.

It was currency manipulator which is what Trump campaigned on. He promised to have them labeled as such because they're conducting the biggest theft against the U.S. In history (his words).

After one conversation with the Chinese president he's backed off that statement. Yet another campaign promise he's failed on.

The art of the deal

It's not all bad. I'm actually glad he's "flexible" and backing away from some of his campaign rhetoric re: foreign policy.

He's pivoted away from Russia. Seems to be building some sort of relationship with China. Bombing ISIS in Afghanistan and continuing Obama's successful fight to retake Mosul (which he'll probably take credit for). Sticking with NATO.

I wonder what majority of supporters think. I suspect other than for the hardcore, they are okay with it as they believe in the man and probably never believed in (or understood) what his policies were.

I like how he is showing off our military. We can hit you surgically from hundreds of miles away or just drop one big bomb on you from above.

But I am getting a little nervous. Im hoping these anti-USA states dont get to frisky and try to strike before they are struck.

It just seems that he's easily influenced. He was all about healthcare for everyone and reducing prescription costs until he talked to representatives from the healthcare industry. He flipped on one China after a conversation. He's flipped on China as a currency manipulator after a meeting with their president. He flipped on Israel. I'm sure there are many other things I'm just not remembering at the moment too.

If it's really flexibility then great, it's a good thing and largely discouraged in politics. However, how quickly and how often he flips on issues makes it appear like he can be manipulated quite easily.

NK is just a shitty situation but there is very close to zero reason to believe they are doing anything based on offensive-minded plans. There's just no upside here for them. Kim wants to stay in power, for which the only deterrent is posessing nuclear capabilities. He also wants to gain back some semblance of an economy, for which he needs the US, China and Europe all to loosen the screws. The only chance to do that (aside from stepping down of course) is gaining leverage due to nuclear weapons in their eyes ...
Looking at this on the basis "hey look, a cooky and insane dictator doing insane stuff" does this whole issue a juge disservice. The guy is smart, ruthless and calculating. Not frothing at the mouth and manically laughing his days away in a dark cellar.

Just a shitty and scary situation.

I also am scared shitless by the cavalier reactions/behaviour of people in immense power to the recent actions. Can you be of the opinion that an agressive policy is warranted ? Sure. But please do not treat it as a game, please. Especially when, all things considered, you are still much more protected from retaliation than a myriad of allies by the mere fact of remoteness.

I think when you are the ultimate leader and come from a line of ultimate leaders, and you have a nationwide cult of personality ... normal ways of thinking cost/benefit don't apply.

I think you give him too much credit.

Look at the absolutely absurd cult of personality built around him and his family. This is a kid who grew up basically being the heir to divinity. The propaganda surrounding his father and grandfather really has no better description - they set themselves up as gods. There's no way he hasn't bought into his own press at least a little bit. I can't believe growing up like that doesn't fuck you up in the head.

Is he a mustache twirling villain laughing maniacally? Probably not. Is he as cold, calculating and, most importantly, as balanced as you're saying? I honestly don't think so.

I'm also not entirely convinced he's bothered about the economy either.

I thought this was about Trumps at first

Watching some pictures of the military parade, I was thinking it would be kinda funny (and then immediately serious right after) if a cruise missile hit that crazy kid right there.

North Korea has had a missile test launch that apparently failed. Details still coming in

So do we believe that "trained on Seoul" means that it'd actually hit Seoul? ;)

Well, the Paris Gun had a range of 80 miles, so I assume that North Korea could manage to use 100 year old technology with some efficiency.

Isnt NK about 150 years behind the times? Or is that just infrastructure?

Thing is that the vast majority of what you read about him and the situation coming out of Asia suggests it's closer to this than the weird picture painted in the US. Probably somewhere in between, but personally i would rather have my politicians overestimate a guy like that than buy into the picture of a lunatic unable to have a rational thought ;)

There is also a strong likelyhood that he went to school in Switzerland age 8 to 16.

Mostly infrastructure though the military isn't up to date either. They would still overrun South Korea and our military there in a matter days. Once South Korea is taken it doesn't matter how far behind they are from a technological standpoint. It would be near impossible to break their position without flattening the entire peninsula.

Although NK has a massive paramilitary force that they're happy to parade around, they're also kind of unique in that despite their contentious relationship with the rest of the world they've never been in even the slightest kind of action or conflict, for the last 50 years, right?

On what do you base that?

I did a quick and dirty research and what I found confirmed what I suspected. The Republic of Korea has twice as many active and reserve military as North Korea, and spends three times as much on their defense than North Korea does. That does not include any direct support fron the United States, which of course also includes a large supporting force and massive naval and air support. The Republic of Korea also has top notch military systems provided and maintained by both American and European allies. They have a massive military advantage over North Korea.

I think your statement that North Korea would "overrun South Korea and our military there in a matter of days" might need some more backing from you.

The source would be based off my wife's training while stationed in Seoul. The estimates are 2.5 minutes to cripple our military and the infrastructure in the Seoul area inthe event of a surprise attack.

The training there is we're a deterant to prevent a surprise attack, but our forces on the ground there would be little more than a speed bump until the navy could respond.

But our navy is currently sitting about 500 miles off the coast of Korea. When was your wife stationed there?

Additionally, I am pretty sure once South Korea realizes what is happening, they will very significantly respond. It's their homeland and that border is possibly the most surveilled in the world.

Sit for 5 minutes with the guy and get whatever you want.

Funny thing about the China currency manipulating is they haven't been doing it for years. Whoever was feeding him that line during the campaign wasn't up to date on global finance. Still funny to see yet another change and another campaign promise scrapped.

It seems that Trump gets painted with a black or white stroke no matter what he does.
I think there has to be a grey area which profits us.

Just saying there have been a bunch of situations where he sat down with someone for a bit and completely changed his stance on an issue.

Trump had a good idea on drug costs. He ditched it after meeting with pharma execs. - Chicago Tribune

FTFY

Take this as you will but I was a former Air Force officer that first served 3 years in South Korea in the late 90s early 200s. I was at Osan Air Base for 2 years which is 33 miles from NK and a 3rd year at Kunsan AB about 55 miles from NK. I regularly flew the vicinity of the DMZ . Once I separated from the AF I spent another 8 years living in South Korea working for a three letter US gov agency. I obvious can't go into much detail here but the North Korea military is hardly a paramilitary force. They are hardened from our intell by military exercises that would shame even the ancient Spartans. They have close to 10,000 pieces of artilllery at the border that can reach our primary air base and Seoul. Once they attcked these targets would be hit similarly to what we did to Baghdad during Desert Storm. They have been planning for decades the infiltration for their special forces to the South via gliders that we would have a hard time detecting. This is without any consideration to their tactical nuclear arsenal.

I also have family via my ex wife's side who are Korea and server in the military. I would bet money that in a straight fight between North and South Korea despite the Norths stronger weaponry from us the sheer numbers of the North 2 to 1 would defeat the mostly conscript 2-3 year service military if SK.

Hmm, thanks Galaril and Atocep.

So what I am curious about, then, if the NK have such military advantages and both sides know it, why don't they attack and occupy SK? It can't be for fear of us. They're testing nuke missiles in blatant defiance of UN and US sanctions. Their leader is likely to be insane.

Why have they not attacked?

That, only that is his concern.

The US and SK would defeat the NK fairly quickly, but the first few days would be a bloodbath for SK citizens. NK would certainly lose a war, but they would inflict a huge amount of damage in the process.

I am not sure it would be quick unless we started it by taking out all their airfields and most of their inplace artillery at the border and at least attempting to get to their underground nuke installation's. They have 5000 tanks compared to the US 50 and South Koreas 2300. Theirs are not as modern as ours but they could quickly overrun the South and envelop Seoul and push to at least Pyongtaek and likely much further.

The piece that I read gave the upper hand to NK for up to four days. At that point we'd have total air superiority and they wouldn't be able to move without catastrophic damage to their armor and artillery. Even if that's a few days off, the basic idea is the same, something similar, but not reaching as far south as 1950.

I really feel like Ossoff has very little chance of winning the GA-6 race. Right now the polls look like he will miss the 50% mark to avoid a runoff. I think he has almost no chance to win a runoff, since any undecideds will almost certainly break GOP.

What's frustrating is I think the Dems have mismanaged the expectations game here. This will be much harder to spin as a good result if Ossoff loses the runoff by like 5 points (eventhough it's be a 17 point swing from Nov) than the KS-04 race was.

So many Dems are actually expecting an Ossoff victory. I've had friends who excitedly tell me how they heard Ossoff is in the lead. His "lead" is meaningless right now. He's losing by however many points he's lower than 50%. I wish more people understood that, but I fear there will be lots of upset people shocked when Ossoff loses the runoff.

If Karen Handel wins, I have no idea what will happen. She is terrible and generally unliked.

And Trump called Erdogan to congratulate him on passing the referendum that killed what's left of democracy in Turkey.

I'm sure there's some amazing long game play here that we just don't understand.

Probably just continuing America's policy of being kind to friendly dictators.

I am not sure I agree about the run off. What you say is certainly the conventional wisdom, but run offs become almost solely a turnout contest. Ossoff will have a tremendous cash advantage and he's built a pretty respectable and motivated base. He may be able to get them to show up twice--I just don't remember a cash mismatch like this.

This is partly true but invading North Korea is likely going to be long, slow, and costly. While there are few, if any, reasons to expect a North Korean victory over the South, the converse is equally unlikely. Any invasion of North Korea would be slow and costly, offering both sides many opportunities to either “pause” and de-escalate conflict, or escalate to total devastation. First, invading North Korea guarantees the mass artillery shelling of Seoul, South Korea’s capital, and North Korea’s use of “battlefield” chemical weapons at scale. If the alliance is invading, there’s no reason for North Korea to refrain from taking these actions. Second, moving large numbers of troops into North Korea requires not only facing down an adversary with home field advantage, but a topography that’s entirely inhospitable to outside invasion—highly mountainous, lots of underground facilities and tunnels, and with very little infrastructure such as roads and bridges to exploit. Third, because North Korea’s local advantages would dramatically slow the progress of a northward march, North Korea would have plenty of time to confirm that its regime is facing extinction, which increases incentives to launch nuclear strikes.