Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, Republican Representative Greg Murphy claimed that attacks by the Democrats on the MAGA leader’s health care plans were futile, almost entirely because Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, don’t actually have a “full, fleshed-out plan.”
“The Harris campaign has just released this new report, it came out this morning, they’re calling it ‘The Trump-Vance Concept of Healthcare: A plan to rip away coverage from people with preexisting conditions and raise costs for millions,’” said guest host Cheryl Casone. “We’re now starting to have that conversation about health care, which is still a main issue for voters across this country. What do you make of the campaign doing this?”
“Well, Kamala and her crew, it’s absolute nonsense. There’s not a full, fleshed-out plan by the president or J.D. Vance, and for them to come out with a book of fiction, they’re just a bunch of damn liars,” Murphy retorted.
Lol. Right. They don’t have a plan. It’s only been 14 years since the ACA was passed. You can’t expect them to have a fill, fleshed out plan. They just plan to repeal what we have and replace it with a concept of a plan. Good enough for government work I guess.
By the way, JD has described his “concept” in some detail:
Think about it: a young American doesn’t have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. And we want to make sure everybody is covered.
But the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our healthcare system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.
In other words: the Trump plan, according to Vance, is to permit insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.” Which in essence means “Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare.” KFF explained how the sort of high-risk pools envisioned by Vance worked prior to the ACA — or more precisely, how they never worked.
The reflexive rationalization of the Trump voter: I don’t like everything he says but I just like his policies. What policies you say? They rarely have a specific answer.
Here an example of one of his allegedly great policies they love so much:
Question:,What actions will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America?
Trump: I was honored as the man of the year. Maybe 20 years ago. The fake news heard about it and said, it never happened… pic.twitter.com/eqOvGHNmiL
That’s Trump being asked a very specific question about a very specific policy and he answered with a long whine about how he was named Michigan Man of the Year (a lie) and how the fake news unfairly denied it.
That’s Trump’s policy. Whining about being treated badly, complaining about immigrants and foreigners and bragging about how well he gets along with dictators. That’s pretty much it. What’s not to love?
A new ruling from Judge McBurney in Georgia overturning the abortion ban and allowing the procedure to continue is amazing.
“While the State’s interest in protecting “unborn” life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the State — and not solely by the woman compelled by the Act to do the State’s work — the balance of rights favors the woman.”
“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.”
“For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could — or should — force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”
“When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then — and only then — should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.”
“There is nothing so urgent or important to the State about the medical records of women who end pregnancies that the privacy rights of those women — and the Fourth Amendment protections that attach to those rights — can be bulldozed away by statutory enactment.”
“…liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”
“Accordingly, Section 4 of the LIFE Act is hereby DECLARED unconstitutional. The State and all its agents, to include any County, Municipal, or other local authority, are once again ENJOINED from seeking to enforce in any manner the LIFE Act’s PECAP termination ban in Georgia.”
Sadly, I’m quite confident the Georgia Supreme Court will overturn this ruling. But damn. That is exactly the reasoned argument against banning abortion. It’s just obvious.
The elite media doesn’t like this sort of thing but it’s smart. Kamala Harris is doing outreach to Black males through alternative media, which is where many of them, like many Americans generally, get their news. I thought this was particularly well done:
These influencers have a million subscribers on YouTube and more on other platforms. I had never watched their show but Harris had me at hello so there’s not much reason to target me. This is group of voters she needs and she’s going where they are.
Now this feed has 4.1 million followers on Instagram, a million on Facebook and 9.2 million on twitter. Think it makes sense to do this? I do:
This is Scout. I had the pleasure of going on a walk with him and his dad, @Tim_Walz. We talked about the time Scout locked himself in a bedroom, why you should be honest about going to the vet, and why dogs bring us all a little closer together. 14/10https://t.co/vKeGbVB41Spic.twitter.com/CXrEMqVMY1
After reading Rick Perlstein’s great essay on the history of polling I’m trying to not take any polling seriously. Our obsession with them, fed by all these new polling sites with averages and projections is really just a parlor game.
Having said that, I can’t help but look at them. I urge you not to follow my example if you value your sanity.
But if you happen to come come across a story or two about the polling, here’s some perspective for you:
Red wavers have dumped a lot of polls on to NC and PA and RCP now shows both states and the Electoral College favoring Trump. Same tactics, same players, same bullshit. https://t.co/uWFmLJdQQ6
Truthfully, it’s all kind of bullshit. But do keep in mind that the right wing players are trying to set expectations by claiming Trump has a lead so that when he loses they can claim it was stolen.
Just in case you weren’t familiar with the quality of Kris Kristofferson’s character, here’s an interview from 1991 of him alongside Weylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson where they speak about the problems in America. RIP to a real legend. https://t.co/DKNuBlGARnpic.twitter.com/CbHGtEo00p
He was always one of my favorites. The guy was a real renaissance man, a super athlete, Rhodes scholar, military officer, political radical, musician, artist, actor, overall mensch and the coolest guy in the world. What a life. We are lucky to have shared it with him.
What a waste of valuable resources. What a selfish opportunist Trump is. How many could be rescued by the first responders diverted to protect Donald? https://t.co/NueNKd4Xfb
Recall that Trump had an ongoing feud with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, when he was in office. And his administration denied North Carolina what it needed to recover from Hurricane Matthew:
Governor Cooper today expressed his disappointment in the Trump Administration and Congressional leadership after they failed to fulfill North Carolina’s funding request for Hurricane Matthew recovery. In a letter, Cooper urged for more robust aid, especially in the form of housing block grants from HUD, in the upcoming budget process. That letter can be read here.
Last month, Cooper worked with Senator Thom Tillis and Representatives David Price and David Rouzer on compiling an unmet needs request to Congress. This week, state officials learned that of the more than $900 million requested, North Carolina will receive just $6.1 million, less than 1% of the resources needed to help communities and families fix homes, repair businesses and recover from the historic flooding. In today’s letter, Governor Cooper reiterated the critical and immediate need for support and urged the President to visit affected communities to better understand the challenges that remain.
By the way, as the storm was bearing down last week and everyone knew it was going to be big, most Republicans, at the direction of this monster, voted to shut down the government. But then they like to do that:
North Carolina Governor, Roy Cooper, is urging President Donald Trump to end the partial federal government shutdown.
The letter, which Cooper tweeted out Wednesday afternoon states the shutdown should end so North Carolina can continue to rebuild from hurricane flood waters and prevent future damage.
Cooper also said while we continue short-term recovery help with FEMA’s help, our critical long-term work to rebuild stronger and smarter is delayed with every day that federal funds are held in Washington.
President Donald Trump hastened to Capitol Hill Wednesday trying to hold jittery congressional Republicans in line on the 19th day of the partial government shutdown. He suggested a deal for his border wall might be getting closer, but he also said the shutdown will last “whatever it takes.”
And you will certainly recall that just a week ago Trump said this:
09/13/2024 04:25 PM EDT
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California — Former President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to withhold federal disaster response funding from California over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s position on water deliveries to farmers.
Speaking to reporters from a golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes on Friday, Trump said he would strong-arm California’s governor into agreeing to send more water from California’s lush north to farm fields in its drier south.
“Gavin Newscum [Newsom] is going to sign those papers,” Trump said, seemingly referencing a 2020 federal decision to increase water deliveries by weakening endangered species rules that Newsom sued over. “If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires, and if we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems.”
Newsom snapped back within minutes of Trump’s remarks, saying in an X post the former president “admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas.”
“Today it’s California’s wildfires. Tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania,” Newsom wrote, referencing two swing states where Kamala Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck in polls ahead of November.
If there is anyone who threatens to withhold disaster aid for political purposes it’s Trump. He did it from the beginning of his term when he made an absolute idiot of himself over Hurricane Maria. Now he’s putting on a show in Georgia and will shortly be blaming Kamala Harris for Hurricane Helene and it appears that the media is prepared to help him by suggesting that she should have been down in North Carolina over the weekend rescuing people in a rubber dinghy or something.
Get ready. They’re going to try to make this into Harris’s Katrina.
Let’s hope the press gets a hold of itself before they can succeed. I’m not sanguine. They just covered Trump’s circus in Valdosta, Georgia as if it was a presidential visit.
At his rally over the weekend, Trump predictably claimed that Kamala Harris should be prosecuted and the crowd predictably started ecstatically chanting “lock her up!”
It is obviously unsurprising that Trump would conjure up imaginary crimes by his political opponent. In 2016, he made “Lock her up!” a signature campaign chant. In 2020, he branded Joe Biden a criminal. The pretext for Harris’s prosecution is that, as vice-president, she presided over border-enforcement policies that Trump opposes. In 2016, the pretext was Clinton’s violation of State Department email protocol. In 2020, it was disproven charges that Biden profited from his son’s business activity in Ukraine.
Obviously, none of the particulars of these allegations — in Harris’s case, Trump hasn’t even managed to manufacture a pretextual criminal allegation — matter to Trump in the slightest. His view of the law is fully relativist. Actions taken on Trump’s behalf are by inherently legal, and actions taken against him are inherently illegal.
That is why Trump continuously brands his political opponents as criminals. In addition to all three of his Democratic campaign opponents, Trump has called for criminal charges to be brought against a long list of targets, including (but not limited to) Barack Obama, John Kerry, Liz Cheney, anybody who criticizes pro-Trump judges, “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials” involved in the 2024 election, among many others.
Just this weekend, he called for charges against Google (for allegedly showing too many negative stories about him in searches) and Nancy Pelosi (for the second time; four years ago, he called for her to be charged for tearing a copy of his speech, and this weekend, he said she should be investigated because her husband sold shares of Visa stock prior to an anti-trust investigation against the company).
It is also why Trump continuously encourages criminal behavior by his allies and defends it as lawful. Paul Manafort did “nothing” and was the victim of a “hoax.” The violent coup attempt by Trump allies on January 6, 2021, was actually a riot by overzealous police officers, and the criminals who carried it out were “hostages.” Trump frequently promises to pardon the J6 criminals, in keeping with his first-term policy of granting mass amnesty to political allies who committed crimes.
We all roll our eyes at this BS. He’s been doing it so long we hardly notice it anymore. But we shouldn’t grow inured to the threat. He
He’s obviously very, very angry about being held accountable for his crimes. There is no way that he will let it go and there’s no one to stop it if he wins. The entire Republican party is bought into his “vengeance is mine” trip and have no problem with allowing his co-conspirators to skate. This will be the new “rule of law” in a second Trump administration: “the law for thee but not for me.”
Normally, I don’t pay too much attention to the Vice Presidential debate in a presidential election campaign because they tend not to matter all that much. Certainly, everyone was excited to see Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin debate Sen. Joe Biden in 2008 because she was such a wild card and everyone tuned in to see if she would fall on her face. (She actually held up pretty well.) There have been famous VP debates in which one of the candidates got skewered by the other, as when Democratic Sen. Lloyd Benson of Texas deftly took down the callow Senator from Indiana Dan Quayle with his withering, “I knew John Kennedy, John Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you sir are no John Kennedy.” But mostly they’re forgettable. In fact, Vice Presidential candidates, even the ones who are part of the winning ticket, are often pretty much forgotten.
But this year I think it might be different. Mostly it’s because it really does appear there will only be one debate between Harris and Trump because Trump is intellectually lazy and knows that he’s incapable of actually preparing for a debate at Harris’s level. He can’t risk another catastrophic failure. So, regrettably, this Vice Presidential debate tomorrow night may be the last big event of the campaign before the election is over.
According to a recent Pew Survey, a quarter of the American people haven’t heard of either Democratic Gov. Tim Walz or GOP Sen. JD Vance so the debate will be very enlightening for them. (I somehow doubt they are the type of people who will tune in but you never know.) Of those who have heard of them, 34% of Americans view Vance favorably, while 42% view him unfavorably and 39% of Americans see Walz favorably, while 33% view him unfavorably. (Vance has the worst favorable ratings of any VP candidate in the last 20 years.) In that respect Walz goes into the debate with a pretty fair advantage.
I would guess that Vance has made a very bad impression because of his nasty, cold personality and very extreme ideology but that’s just a guess. The creepy stuff about unmarried cat ladies destroying the world was not a winning introduction to the national stage and his latest crusade against immigrants from “Haitia” has been, well, deplorable. Walz, on the other hand, comes off as a very warm, regular guy which just isn’t something that offends normal people.
Whether those perceptions will hold up in a debate remains to be seen. The two presidential debates in this election campaign so far have been among the most consequential we’ve ever seen so who knows what might happen with this one?
Apparently, Vance and Walz have both been preparing like candidates usually do, unlike Donald Trump who says he already knows everything he needs to know. Vance has been working with various members of his team including Trump confidante Jason Miller, going over Walz’s record as a congressman and Governor. Walz himself is being played by Rep. Tom Emmer, who has known Walz for years and reportedly can do a fair impression of his voice and mannerisms.
Emmer appeared on “This Week” and refused to talk about Vance simply refusing to move off his talking points about Tim Walz being “Gavin Newsom in a flannel shirt” and portraying Trump as the guy who “fixed the country then Biden and Harris broke it and he’s going to fix it again.” Maybe that’s just one big feint but I’m guessing that’s the Vance game plan — attack Walz as a San Francisco hippie, hit Biden and Harris and pump up Trump.
Walz has Pete Buttigieg playing Vance in his debate prep and his team includes some of the veterans who worked with Harris on hers (which is a good sign.) Buttigieg appeared on Tim Miller’s Bulwark podcast and didn’t give away the game plan but when Miller joked that he hoped playing Vance wouldn’t adversely affect him he said, “I’m going into that head space but hopefully I’ll be able to find my way back out of it. It’s an interesting place to be.” I think it must be a frightening place to be, personally.
Both Vance and Walz have fairly recent experience debating. The LA Times’s Paul Thornton went back and watched some of them and came away with some interesting impressions. He believes that Vance has the edge because “he comes off as fluent on policy, and he can nimbly respond to attack” and in the 2022 Senatorial debates with Congressman Tim Ryan, “he used just about every question from moderators as an opportunity to paint Ryan as petty and hypocritical.” Boy that sure sounds like Vance, doesn’t it?
But as Thornton points out, that was before Vance was known and thoroughly disliked by so many people “a drawback that only more brightly highlights Walz’s best attribute: People just like the guy.”
Vance’s nasty accusations may not play as well against “the coach” who is apparently a pretty solid debater himself, although he has downplayed his skills, seriously lowering expectations. Thornton writes about his 2018 and 2022 Gubernatorial debates:
[T]he opponents attacked in ways that Vance did in his debate with Ryan — but with Walz, nothing rattled him. And Walz did indeed get attacked, perhaps because he was the favorite in both races… He answered policy questions on climate change, mineral extraction, working with the federal government and pandemic response straightforwardly but not in much detail, something for which both Jensen and Johnson attacked Walz.
And Walz never really took the bait. Nice guys whom people like can do that, and perhaps that is Walz’s biggest advantage over the unpopular yet fully policy-briefed Vance.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Walz is being underestimated. He was a teacher for years but he’s been a politician for the past two decades and is in his second term as Governor of Minnesota. He’s a pro. His folksy demeanor may just fool the Yale educated but still very green JD Vance into thinking his rival doesn’t understand politics. I think that may be a mistake.
Will tomorrow’s debate tip the scales in this inexplicably close election? Maybe. But in the end it all comes down to the same question: do people want to go back to the negative, chaotic Trump years and spend four more of them dealing with his rage, revenge and retribution? Or are they ready to move past the drama and the stress of that poisonous era and reach for something fresh and new? We won’t find out until the votes are counted.
