Punk in Finland

Nahkanuijan nuupauttaja wrote:

Mar 24, 8:13 PM EDT

President Donald Trump has marked Medal of Honor Day by appearing in the Oval Office with more than two dozen medal recipients.

Nahkanuijan nuupauttaja wrote:Bannonkin ollut juoksupoikans uhkailemassa.

Huffington Post wrote:Trump is dragging us into another war...and no one is talking about it

03/25/2017 11:47 am ET

Quietly, while Americans have been focused on the ongoing drama over repealing the Affordable Care Act and the new revelations about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Trump has been busy dramatically expanding the American troop presence inside Syria. And virtually no one in Washington has noticed. Americans have a right to know what Trump is planning and whether this will lead to an Iraq-style occupation of Syria for years to come.

Without any official notification, Trump sent 500 new American troops into Syria, ostensibly to take part in the upcoming assault on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. News reports suggest this deployment may just be the tip of the iceberg, with some saying that the plan is for hundreds more American troops to be added to the fight in the coming weeks. No one actually knows how many troops are inside Syria now, because the administration has largely tried to keep the build-up a secret.

This deployment poses a significant, potentially catastrophic risk for the United States and the future of Syria and the Middle East. Congress cannot be silent on this matter. I have long been against putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria—I opposed the idea during the Obama administration and I oppose it now, because I believe we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the Iraq War if we try to force political stability simply through the barrel of a gun. I would urge my colleagues who have not focused on the question of U.S. troop presence in Syria to, at the very least, demand the administration answer two basic questions before signing off on the money to fund this dangerous escalation.

First, what is our mission and what is our exit strategy?

The public explanation of the military escalation has been to prepare for the assault on Raqqa. Taking Raqqa is a necessary and long-desired objective. The problem lies in making U.S. troops an indispensible part of the invasion force, which likely will require us to stay and become an indispensible part of the occupation force as well. This is what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I see no reason why we wouldn’t face the same trap in Syria. But if this is not the administration’s plan, they should be explicit about this. They should assure Congress and the American public that we are in Syria simply until Raqqa falls, and no longer.

There are other important questions to ask. Recently, Trump sent a small group of Special Forces operators to Manbij to keep the peace between Kurdish and Turkish-backed forces fighting for control of this remote section of northern Syria. This suggests our military mission is much broader—and more complicated—than simply helping to retake Raqqa.

Many Syria experts agree that once Raqqa is taken from ISIS, the fighting is just beginning. The contest then begins between the various proxy forces (Saudi, Iranian, Russian, Turkish, Kurdish) over who ultimately controls the city. Will U.S. forces leave at that point, or does Trump’s plan envision that we will stay to mediate future control of large portions of the battlespace? This would be a mirror of Iraq, in which thousands of Americans died trying to figure out the post-Saddam settlement of accounts between the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. And it could result in just as much American bloodshed.

Second, do we have a political strategy or just a military strategy?

This past Thursday, I joined other members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee for lunch with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. I was glad that Tillerson was willing to open the doors of the State Department to a bipartisan group of Senators, and our discussion was honest and frank. In the meeting, Tillerson showed admirable candor in admitting that the military strategy was far ahead of the diplomatic strategy in Syria.

But this was actually a dramatic understatement. Unless a secret plan exists that Trump is keeping from U.S. Senators and his own Secretary of State, there is absolutely no plan for who controls post-ISIS Raqqa, or post-Assad Syria.

The obstacles to a political plan for the future of Raqqa increase by the week. U.S. military leaders want to rely on Kurdish and Arab fighters to retake Raqqa, but hope that the Kurds will then abandon the city after they lose hundreds or thousands of their soldiers in the assault. Even if this fantasy were to become reality, it would come at a price – the Kurds would expect something in return for their effort. And today, we have no idea how to execute this two-step without having peace undermined by the Turks, who remain violently opposed to giving territory the Kurds. To add complications, the Russian and Iranian-backed forces, sitting just outside Raqqa today, are not going to allow for a U.S.-backed Arab or Arab/Kurdish government to be peacefully installed inside the city. They will want a piece of the action, and we have no credible plan to accommodate them today.

Without a political plan for the future of Raqqa, a military plan is practically useless. Yes, getting ISIS out of Raqqa is a victory in and of itself, but if we set into motion a series of events that simply prolongs the broader conflict, ISIS will easily pick up the pieces and use the ongoing turmoil to regroup and reemerge. We should have learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that a military victory without a plan for what comes next is really not a victory at all. But unbelievably, we seem on the verge of making this mistake again, because of (understandable) enthusiasm for taking the fight to a vicious enemy.

I want ISIS gone. I want them destroyed. But I want it done the right way. I do not want to Americans to die and billions of dollars to be wasted in a war that makes the same mistakes as the disastrous American invasion of Iraq. And I certainly don’t want the war to start in secret, without Congress even noticing that it’s starting. Congress needs to get in the game and start asking questions - before it’s too late.

BBC wrote:Donald Trump: Tax reform next after healthcare failure

US President Donald Trump says he will turn to tax reform, following his failure to get his healthcare bill through Congress on Friday.

The draft bill would have scrapped the Affordable Care Act of his predecessor Barack Obama, which was opposed by Mr Trump's Republican party for years.

Obamacare requires all Americans to have healthcare but offers subsidies to people on low incomes.

Mr Trump's bill was withdrawn because of a lack of support from Republicans.

They control both houses of Congress, and the withdrawal is a major setback for the new president.

Mr Trump campaigned on his skills as a dealmaker.

"I would say that we will probably start going very, very strong for the big tax cuts and tax reform. That will be next," Mr Trump told reporters at the White House.

However, the tax cuts were supposed to be paid for by savings from the withdrawn healthcare bill.

Without the spending cuts in the failed bill, any tax cuts will add to the federal budget deficit.

Mr Trump lashed out at Democrats in Congress after the bill was withdrawn, blaming the opposition party for not backing his legislation.

But it was House Republicans who ensured it was shelved, after Speaker Paul Ryan decided he could not get enough backing from his own party.

"Doing big things is hard," Mr Ryan said.

The president refrained from criticising Mr Ryan, whose job as speaker of the House involves rallying support for controversial bills.

"We learned about loyalty; we learned a lot about the vote-getting process," he said.

On Saturday Mr Trump repeated his claim that Obamacare would "explode", tweeting "we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!"

Obamacare has been troubled by increases in insurance premiums. It also imposes tax penalties on uninsured Americans - many of them low- to moderate-income earners.

However, it also bans insurance companies from denying health coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions and allows young people to remain on their parents' plans until age 26.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Friday that tax reform was "a lot simpler" in many ways than healthcare reform.

Mr Mnuchin said that his goal remained to get tax measures through Congress by August this year.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer admitted that this goal was "an ambitious one", but one that the administration was "going to try to stick to".

The New York Times wrote:The TrumpRyanCare Debacle
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Repealing the Affordable Care Act was meant to be the first demonstration of the power and effectiveness of a unified Republican government. It has turned out to be a display of incompetence and cruelty.

Republican leaders withdrew the American Health Care Act before a vote scheduled for Friday afternoon after it became clear that they did not have the votes to pass it. Many far-right conservatives opposed the bill because it would not have completely repealed the A.C.A., or Obamacare. And some more moderate Republicans said they would vote no because the bill would cause immense damage — 24 million people would lose health insurance over 10 years and millions of others would be hit with higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs. Surely, many of them were also thinking about a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing that 56 percent of American voters opposed the legislation and just 17 percent supported it.

When Barack Obama was president, Republicans in the House voted dozens of times to repeal the health care law in a symbolic exercise meant to appeal to their base. But never did they present a plan that could improve on the law for their constituents. Still, G.O.P. leaders imagined that with the House, Senate and White House in their hands, what had once been a hollow threat could become actual policy. That they failed in this legislative effort could well affect the rest of their agenda — tax cuts for the rich, changing the corporate tax structure and new infrastructure spending. The debacle shows President Trump and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, that they can’t count on automatic Republican majorities, especially when they’re offering a destructive, incoherent measure.

Which is pretty much what happened here. Despite their ceaseless attacks on the health care act since Mr. Obama signed it into law in March 2010, Mr. Trump, Mr. Ryan and their colleagues have never had a workable plan that could gain the support of a congressional majority. That is why they rushed their turkey of a bill to the floor without going through the laborious process of holding hearings and building coalitions. The last-minute wheeling and dealing did nothing to disguise the bill’s underlying and increasingly obvious purpose, which was to reduce taxes for the wealthy by cutting benefits for the needy.

Meanwhile, the great dealmaker at the White House was completely ineffectual. Mr. Trump spent a few days cajoling and threatening lawmakers, then threw up his hands and said he had done all he could and was now moving on to other matters. Groups representing doctors and hospitals, as well as public interest groups like AARP and the American Civil Liberties Union, fought hard, and even Republican governors like John Kasich of Ohio and Brian Sandoval of Nevada opposed the bill.

In fact, as Republicans moved closer to a vote, public support for Obamacare went up — 49 percent of those polled this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation had a favorable view of the law, up from 43 percent in December. Obamacare, though not without flaws, has done a world of good. The percentage of Americans who do not have health insurance has fallen to 9.1 percent, from 16.3 percent in 2010. A 2016 Kaiser study of people who gained insurance in California found that 77 percent of them said their health needs were being met very well or somewhat well. By comparison, only 49 percent of those people said their needs were being met three years earlier.

There is no doubt that improvements are needed. Deductibles and premiums are too high for many people, and too many young people are forgoing insurance altogether. More generous subsidies for people with modest incomes could bring the cost of health care down at a relatively small expense to the government.

The worry now among advocates for lower-income Americans and the sick is that the Trump administration might seek to undermine the health care law through administrative steps. For example, officials could seek to reduce subsidies that help people earning just above the federal poverty line pay for out-of-pocket costs. Republicans in the House sued the Obama administration in 2014 to block those subsidies. That case is still pending, and the Trump administration could decide to stop defending the subsidies. Such a move would only compound the mistakes it made by trying to rush a half-baked bill through the House.

Friday’s outcome is good for the country, but humiliating for the Republican leadership. For Mr. Trump, it is a rather brutal reminder that campaigning is the easy part.

Jesse Python wrote:Vittu toi maa on sekasin