Florida State Seminoles

[sardis]

I thought I had caught a break on insurance for a bit.

My wife's school still offered the HMO plan with reasonable co-pays and an affordable (by my standards) premium. And with teacher salaries, I figured they only jack up the rates by $20 or $30 a year and we could ride that out for a few years.

Unfortunately last night - whatever board makes decisions on those sorts of thing decided to move to the HSA approach with a high deductible. I'm not sure of the reasoning but I would assume they pitched that costs were unsustainable.

I really, really despise Obama for his attempts to provide healthcare for everyone.

I'm sure he stays up at night losing sleep in his multi-million dollar home, government pension and lifetime health insurance about some middle class guy in Ohio.

Are you sure they aren’t somehow helping fund the HSA? Back in Charlotte I was on the board of a private school and we made this switch, but was willing to fund the deductible because most teachers are young and don’t use much of the deductible. It was cheaper to do that than the premiums of a low deductible plan.

[bluetick]

How'd that old saw go?

I cried over my higher deductible
then I met a man with no feet

[BigRedMan]

How'd that old saw go?

I cried over my higher deductible
then I met a man with no feet

Well fuck him, he is probably on disability.

[BigRedMan]

I thought I had caught a break on insurance for a bit.

My wife's school still offered the HMO plan with reasonable co-pays and an affordable (by my standards) premium. And with teacher salaries, I figured they only jack up the rates by $20 or $30 a year and we could ride that out for a few years.

Unfortunately last night - whatever board makes decisions on those sorts of thing decided to move to the HSA approach with a high deductible. I'm not sure of the reasoning but I would assume they pitched that costs were unsustainable.

I really, really despise Obama for his attempts to provide healthcare for everyone.

I'm sure he stays up at night losing sleep in his multi-million dollar home, government pension and lifetime health insurance about some middle class guy in Ohio.

All the fuck Obama did was allow your company to past the cost down to you with these high deductible plans. "Oh young people won't use it so they have time to fill their HSA over years before they have a family". Great, now that bank gets to make extra money for all that money sitting there and but the majority of the workforce all over has a family, well fuck them, they will just have to deal with it.

[eCat]

I thought I had caught a break on insurance for a bit.

My wife's school still offered the HMO plan with reasonable co-pays and an affordable (by my standards) premium. And with teacher salaries, I figured they only jack up the rates by $20 or $30 a year and we could ride that out for a few years.

Unfortunately last night - whatever board makes decisions on those sorts of thing decided to move to the HSA approach with a high deductible. I'm not sure of the reasoning but I would assume they pitched that costs were unsustainable.

I really, really despise Obama for his attempts to provide healthcare for everyone.

I'm sure he stays up at night losing sleep in his multi-million dollar home, government pension and lifetime health insurance about some middle class guy in Ohio.

Are you sure they aren’t somehow helping fund the HSA? Back in Charlotte I was on the board of a private school and we made this switch, but was willing to fund the deductible because most teachers are young and don’t use much of the deductible. It was cheaper to do that than the premiums of a low deductible plan.

I'm not sure what the particulars are but it went up $4K for her on a family plan

It might be a blessing in disguise - she is talking about quitting that glorified day care center and getting a real job.

[eCat]

From CNN of all places...


The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.

The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down" and "knock it off" as they drew up plans to "strike back" against the Russians, according to an account from Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump"."

But why did Obongo go soft on Russia? According to Jennings:

"My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on the nuclear deal with Iran. Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on election interference would have, in Obama's estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned out to be a disastrous policy decision.

Obama's supporters claim he did stand up to Russia by deploying sanctions after the election to punish them for their actions. But, Obama, according to the Washington Post, "approved a modest package... with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic." In other words, a toothless response to a serious incursion.

But don't just take my word for it that Obama failed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists, once said that "the Obama administration should have done a lot more." The Washington Post reported that a senior Obama administration official said they "sort of choked" in failing to stop the Russian government's brazen activities. And Obama's ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said, "The punishment did not fit the crime" about the weak sanctions rolled out after the 2016 election.

A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential "collusion" narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration's failures. Two years have been spent fomenting the idea that Russia only interfered because it had a willing, colluding partner: Trump. Now that Mueller has popped that balloon, we must ask why this collusion narrative was invented in the first place.

Given Obama's record on Russia, one operating theory is that his people needed a smokescreen to obscure just how wrong they were. They've blamed Trump. They've even blamed Mitch McConnell, in some twisted attempt to deflect blame to another branch of government. Joe Biden once claimed McConnellrefused to sign a letter condemning the Russians during the 2016 election. But McConnell's office counters that the White House asked him to sign a letter urging state electors to accept federal help in securing local elections -- and he did.

I guess if I had failed to stop Russia from marching into Crimea, making a mess in Syria, and hacking our democracy I'd be looking to blame someone else, too.

But the Mueller report makes it clear that the Russian interference failure was Obama's alone. He was the commander-in-chief when all of this happened. In 2010, he and Eric Holder, his Attorney General, declined to prosecute Julian Assange, who then went on to help Russia hack the Democratic National Committee's emails in 2016. He arguably chose to prioritize his relationship with Putin vis-à-vis Iran over pushing back against Russian election interference that had been going on for at least two years.

If you consider Russian election interference a crisis for our democracy, then you cannot read the Mueller report, adding it to the available public evidence, and conclude anything other than Barack Obama spectacularly failed America. Subsequent investigations of this matter should explore how and why Obama's White House failed, and whether they invented the collusion narrative to cover up those failures."

[aTm]

Postby aTm » Wed May 10, 2017 10:33 am
First off, how many votes did "the Russians" cast in the election?

Secondly, if Russians are hacking and influencing our institutions...who is to blame? Trump, for being the candidate a foreign government wants? No. Its these fucking intelligence services that are supposed to stop that shit from happening. Maybe Trump broke some laws, while he was a candidate or whatever, but as far as "influencing the election".... if Russia was really allowed to influence our elections, that is clearly the fault of the intelligence apparatus that existed before Trump was in office.

[Professor Tiger]

Congressperson Maxine Waters Claims AG Barr Redacted the Super Bowl Score

(MSNBC) Both the political and sports worlds were rocked today as Congressperson Maxine Waters (D - CA) accused Attorney General Barr of secretly tampering with the final score of Super Bowl LIII. The official final score of the game was New England Patriots 13 LA Rams 3. However, Ms. Waters (whose district is within the LA area), claims that the Rams actually defeated the Patriots 27-0. She asserts that the Attorney General secretly redacted the score to give appearance of a Patriots victory.

The congressperson held a press conference in Washington on Saturday claiming that she has a secret report from an ongoing investigation into the matter by the DOJ, FBI, and the Intelligence Community. “I cannot comment any further because the investigators have not finished their report. But I demand to see the original Super Bowl score before Barr redacted it! Trump must be impeached!”

Neither the NFL, the Patriots or Rams organizations, nor the agencies involved, cared to comment on this blockbuster revelation.

[bluetick]

Postby aTm » Wed May 10, 2017 10:33 am
First off, how many votes did "the Russians" cast in the election?

Secondly, if Russians are hacking and influencing our institutions...who is to blame? Trump, for being the candidate a foreign government wants? No. Its these fucking intelligence services that are supposed to stop that shit from happening. Maybe Trump broke some laws, while he was a candidate or whatever, but as far as "influencing the election".... if Russia was really allowed to influence our elections, that is clearly the fault of the intelligence apparatus that existed before Trump was in office.

US Ripe for Russian Meddling in 2020, Experts Say https://www.ft.com/content/a6dc84ee-523 ... 9ef1626294

This time nobody is getting blindsided. Why are we ripe?

[sardis]

You make think it’s a mystery, but pretty much everyone else knows who did it.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/21/opinio ... cnn.com%2F

[Professor Tiger]

Indeed. Many Christian churches attacked on Easter Sunday. I guess we'll never know the motivation that attack.

[bluetick]

Yeah, and Christian churches burning all over the south. Apparently blacks don't unplug the coffee maker.

[Jungle Rat]

Removing your butt plug does

[bluetick]

Removing your butt plug does

Rat hip to the Mayor Pete craze. Smooth.

[eCat]

Hillary gave a talk yesterday at some fundraiser where she said the Mueller report shows that Trump should be indicted.

That's amazing to me - not that someone thinks that, but the woman who needed Obama's AG and a FBI director breaking protocol to keep her from being indicted would throw shade like that.

If anything we know without a doubt Hillary is guilty of crimes that people who didn't have the benefit of a FBI director covering them have went to jail for. At least there is ambiguity on whether Trump is guilty of the crimes he is accused of. Whether you agree with the conclusion Mueller came up with or not, no one will accuse Mueller of covering for Trump. He stacked the deck with people that were highly motivated to convict Trump and went well beyond the scope of his investigation to find crimes committed that could be leveraged to find evidence against a sitting president of the United States - and he still found nothing to push him to conclude collusion, and essentially the entire obstruction charges are based on 1. Trump telling Lester Holt he fired Comey because of the investigation (which was probably a lie and just bragging) and 2. That Trump was so pissed at Mueller he wanted Mueller fired.

Trump didn't do anything behind the scenes though - he'd ask his lawyer if he should fire Muller and then go tweet about it 20 minutes later. where as in the case of Hillary - innocent people don't use bleachbit to clean hard drives before turning them over to the FBI

Years from now I do expect a tell all from Mueller or someone on his staff that will state they had Trump dead to rights, but chose not to proceed because of the chaos from indicting a sitting president. And it might be true but I suspect when you get into the details of the crime , most people will still say "that's all he did?"

[hedge]

"Years from now I do expect a tell all from Mueller or someone on his staff that will state they had Trump dead to rights, but chose not to proceed because of the chaos from indicting a sitting president"

Years from now? He already said exactly that...

[eCat]

"Years from now I do expect a tell all from Mueller or someone on his staff that will state they had Trump dead to rights, but chose not to proceed because of the chaos from indicting a sitting president"

Years from now? He already said exactly that...

no he didn't

he said he didn't find any collusion, and could not find enough evidence in obstruction to support indictment, but his findings do not exonerate the president on obstruction.

if you read up on it, basically Trump wanted to obstruct but the team he had in place - specifically his attorney - advised against it and would not act on Trump's request.

Trump may have *wanted* to obstruct, but he did not because his council refused to act on it. But Trump could have taken the action himself - he chose not to.

His intention to obstruct, if there was any, was not because of any guilt or actions with collusion but the reality that an investigation would hinder his ability to move his agenda forward with congress.

By Washington D.C. corruption standards, he looks like a boy scout in all of this.

[hedge]

So attempted murder is OK if you don't actually kill the person?

[hedge]

But I do kinda agree with you, by the standards of Washington, it seems pretty, well, standard...

[eCat]

So attempted murder is OK if you don't actually kill the person?

of course not, but if you say - hey, I want you to kill this guy and the guy you want to do it says, "no I don't think I'm going to do that because its against the law", then that's the end of it. I understand that's still some illegal action in the case of murder, but we're not talking murder, we're talking firing a person and its not even clear if that in itself is obstruction. Trump knew enough at least to claim it was a conflict of interest on Mueller's behalf to justify the firing. McGahn (his attorney) knew that he'd be the bag man if that went south, similar to Cohen as Trump's council, and he (McGahn) chose to shut that line of discussion down. Unlike Cohen , McGahn decided to act as council, not as a lap dog.

Trump chose to fill his staff with people that saved him from himself

Liberals want to turn the Mueller Report into the Minority Report