The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

(If the video above isn't to your licking you have the full untampered press conf here)
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/16/trump-press-conference-full.cnn

On youtube:



It's quite surreal. Also watch it at 1.5x speed.

The NHS like many things has it's strong and weak points. I'd say as a generalisation that it's usually pretty good with more serious conditions. They are for example very proficient when it comes to heart issues (my father recently had quite a major operation on his heart to *prevent* him having a heart attack, rather than allowing it to happen resulting in him being pretty much 100% back to normal now).

In terms of cancer- they offer a lot of treatments, and again members of my family have had good treatment in the past (my grandmother had breast cancer in her 40's which they cured and she lived to 86). Where they have been getting flack is for specific, unusually aggressive cancers- there are new treatments available in other countries however the UK / NHS procedures on approving these treatments takes a long time. I have actually developed a number of products for the NHS- it takes 5+ years to get anything approved and out onto wards. Whilst there are good reasons for it (and in some cases has probably avoided potential serious issues from using 'unproven' technologies / drugs) it's not very comforting to someone facing death when there is something that *might* help them. That appears even worse when the main reason for not allowing many of these new treatment is ultimately cost- however if you've got a system that has to support 65,000,000 people, cost / benefit *has* to be taken into account.

I guess that is one of the flaws of NHS. If I was British, I would be upset that my country wasn't doing everything possible to defeat that terrible disease. There is a lot of excitement in the medical industry with some of the new drugs. Treatments like immunotherapy have been more successful and have less side effects than traditional chemo. It's ashame that Britian is 5 years behind us in treatments options.

Talked to a Trump supporter the other day. He was an elderly latino btw, in fact. Don't know why I felt the need to volunteer that detail, probably because you think he's a white toothless hick with trucker cap and mullet.

Pretty much, as long as he ends the ACA, and closes big and small job and money leaks out of the country, then he's fine. It's just a shame they're trying to impeach him on technicalities instead of those "internment camps" he never erected. We would have gotten political malpractice either way, it'd either be obvious and unprofessional, or it'd be well-concealed wetwork.

It's crazy to think these people exist in large numbers, but are being suppressed.

and the rapport is??????

watch the damn video

That is on the nhs, people can still elect to pay privately... also the 5 years isn't a rule so much as the nhs won't touch anything without thorough clinical trials, which takes about 5 years to complete. The issue is the drug companies are very quick to claim a new drug a miracle cure with limited evidence, whilst charging a fortune for it. Usually under more scrutiny the circumstances which the wonder drugs work is quite specific and limited- individuals who are desperate see the news / reports of a new 'cure' and take it at face value... I honestly think the policy is fairly sensible.

Thought it was a good press conference - even the reporters liked it and one of them asked if they could do it every week. Regardless of what you think of him, it's pretty great to have a President talk openly like that for an hour with some content. That one question about Trump being an anti-semite was pretty stupid though.

Trump's 'feud' with CNN is pretty funny. Almost reminds me of the Rosie O'Donnel thing, and sort of like his pretend feud with Arnorld Schwarznegger. He's definitely an interesting character.

Trump on the press

Trump on CNN

Then CNN does just that LOL.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/16/media/media-bashing-donald-trump-press-conference/

As for Trump being a misogynist, i hope more people will start to realise it was always a political witch hunt.

That wasn't the question. The question was how is the government going to respond to a rise in antisemitism in general. The reporter went out of his way to start by saying nobody was accusing Trump of antisemitism.

And he spent a gigantic portion of the press conference talking about how terrible the press was.

That doesn't say much about the quality of Trump, more about the fact that the press people think this kind of thing gets people to buy their magazine/watch their news/etc pp.

elodea : "all hail supreme leader trump. he is perfect in every way. when he was 3 he bullseyed a clay pidgeon with his pee from 5 miles away!"

I didn't say trump was great. Again, regardless of what you think of him whether positive or negative, press conferences in this style have substantial content. People buy things that have value.

*edit*
If anything, it's these kind of solo and open press conferences that will confirm Trump is a villain if and when he eventually trips up. Sean Spicer is a real dumbass and I don't know why Trump hasn't fired him yet. Tone and choice of words are so very different between Spicer and Trump.

No, the question was about associating Trump with Trump followers who voice anti-semitic beliefs. It wasn't about anti-semitism "in general". Same deal with people on both sides playing the "oh the KKK supported you, therefore you must be a white supremacist racist" card.

And here's the interestiing thing, in a particular sense I don't disagree with the question. There is indeed a lot of anti-semitic stuff being voiced in the alt right sphere. However, the vast majority of it is merely counter virtue signalling to their cultural ingroup and said in jest - "they think we're racist nazi's, so let's amp it up and troll them". Even that super hardcore anti-jew radio host from 'the right stuff' turned out to be married to a jewish woman. Pretty funny. Also pretty funny is how american progressives are crying about anti-semiticism when their ideology is systematically biased against Israel as some great demon oppressing those poor brown people.

It is not however anyway relevant to Trump or his policies so it was a retarded question. What can any president pragmatically do about it? Place sanctions on the first amendment? I mean, he's already publicly denounced racism and hatred done under his banner - calling them to "stop it".

And i spend a lot of time denigrating the quality of e.g. bad movies. Doesn't mean I don't think the idea of movies are a good thing, or that I don't appreciate good movies when I see them. Which is fine if I don't show any intention of using violence or coercion to ban all movies I think are bad.

You need to also keep in mind that this was a press conference. The press asks questions and the President responds. If you think Trump talked a lot about fake news, then you should really be asking why the press cares so much about constantly bringing it up. If you think you're not fake news, why bother wasting your questions provoking nonsense when you could spend it asking about actual valuable information like tax reform, economic policy etc etc.

You see, at the heart of it is an entrenched corporate institution that is deeply concerned with protecting their financial interests. It isn't actually about the fourth estate from an ideological perspective. You don't see independent news media, political youtubers, or citizen journalists being very concerned about this.

I didn't say you said Trump was great.

From what I last heard the media that Trumps points his finger at today usually sees a massive spike in sales/views tomorrow.

Well then i misinterpreted you. You may not think the press conference was that interesting, I did. It wasn't all about the topic of fake news. Networks like CNN are making it out to have been the only important topic because it is in their interest to defend against it. There hasn't been a press conference as open like this by a president certainly for a very very long time, and it gave for example some very interesting insight into Trump's perspective of Russian activity and as such subsequent foreign diplomacy.

Gonna repeat it again because it's important. Trump is not attacking 'the media'. He is calling out specific players within the media. Freedom of the press is not just about monolithic established corporate institutions. It involves everyone down to the smallest of citizen journalists. It is certainly not a good thing for your bottom line to be pointed out by a president specifically as fake news. The "no such thing as bad publicity" rule doesn't apply to information businesses where your source of revenue is directly related to perceived trust. I assure you, CNN could be making a lot more money if they actually had a corporate restructure and turned their reputation around.

Watch the press conference. It was a lot more than CNN getting lambasted.

Dumbass John McCain prank phone called. Thought he was talking to the prime minister of Ukraine and got recorded discussing sanctions, weapon sales, foreign policy etc.

Russian hackers at it again. Further proof that the American people are an oppressed minority.

No, it really wasn't. He mentioned bomb threats without accusing Trump supporters of making them.

Go to 1:04:00 in the press conference video posted in this thread. Nothing about Trump, his staff, or his supporters.

Thanks for pointing that out, I stand corrected. Had to turn the volume way up to hear the question again properly. You're right, it was a jewish trump supporter asking about general anti-semiticism that was mistaken as a hostile trap question coming from the usual suspects.

Nah bro, only Hillary had that kind of marksmanship and biological talent when she was 3...