DanG

What, exactly, does extreme vetting entail? It's okay if you don't know. No one does, it is a buzz word with no actual meaning. - Dan G

Just a quick question to see where you're coming from: was Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea illegal? - Dan G

The VA provides my prosthetic and audiology care directly, but I can go to a private provider with VA approval. It is easier just to go to the VA directly. Less paperwork. No matter what laws they change, there will always be paperwork. - Dan G

Because of the nature of my retirement I have TriCare, too. It has co-pays and other restrictions just like regular insurance. If I need very expensive care (in my case prosthetics and audiology, both stemming directly from my service) I could go to a regular provider and use TriCare, but I would be paying a lot of money out of pocket. I know some people are okay with that. A conservative poster on this site (who rarely posts anymore) said that all the government owed wounded service members was basic job training. According to him, if they were able to work they didn't need disability payments or free medical care. I'd like to think we still value people's sacrifice a little more than that, but maybe that attitude is changing. On the other hand, I'd like to echo what melch said above. Being a veteran doesn't make you a hero. Being a wounded or disabled veteran doesn't make you a hero, either. There are very few true heroes either in or out of the military. I certainly am not a hero, and I don't like being called one just because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. - Dan G

I'm not saying the VA is perfect. I'm also not saying that the recent efforts to improve the VA solved all the problems. What I am saying is one of the identified problems was lack of medical staff. Refusing to hire more medical staff can never fix that problem. I suppose you could work the system like that. The private hospital system would need to be prepared for a huge influx of new patients. I'm not sure we can handle that. The Medicare system would also have to be expanded. I'm not sure you'd really save much money. The VA does some things really well. Between the last post I made and this one I got a call from one of my providers at the VA. I had put in a request through my primary care giver for a replacement part for my prosthetic last week. Today they called to tell me they are going to send me four new parts so if one breaks again I won't have any downtime. They also made me an appointment to come try out a new high tech prosthetic hand next Friday. Sure, I had to wait on the phone five minutes to get my appointment. Regardless of what Trump thinks, VA healthcare isn't just a pile of dying old men littering the halls of a dusty hospital while incompetent doctors and corrupt staff people spit at them. - Dan G

How is a hiring freeze going to turn that around? One of the finding of that report was that there were too many vacant positions. I don't know the history, but part of the deal when people sign up is that if they get hurt the government will take care of them. It would probably save money to just eliminate the VHA and make all the vets use private doctors. But are we going to say that veteran care should only be reimbursed at Medicare rates? Does the vet who lost his leg in service of his country still have co-pays like the fat guy who lost his leg to diabetes? Or do you have special rules for disabled vets, and those rules are administered by different people? - Dan G

Actually, it seems like things were improving. Maybe they weren't improving fast enough, that's subjective. Preventing the VA from filling open positions simply doesn't make sense. I realize it is your side doing it, but it doesn't make it smart. - Dan G

As a veteran it aggravates me when right-wing conservatives who never served in the military prevent the VA from filling thousands of open positions, and reduce the already low morale by insinuating that existing VA staff are all corrupt or incompetent. The wise approach is to let someone who knows what the fuck he's doing (like the Secretary of the VA) make management decisions instead of dictating from a position of complete ignorance. - Dan G

Well, he was likely going to use that limo in some sort of terrorist plot. All the Muslim immigrants are terrorists, right? - Dan G

Who is designing the robots? Who is maintaining the robots? If your answer is, "other robots" then we're not talking about robots anymore. We're talking about a new, intelligent form of life. At that point, which will not happen in the next 20 years, sorry, the whole world paradigm has changed. In the next 20 years I think we'll see some self driving cars/trucks that will still require a human driver to monitor and react to unpredictable events. We won't be ale to transition to a driverless system because the infrastructure to allow machine vision to work doesn't exist in many parts of the world, including the rural US. We'll see more robotic assembly of products, potentially even clothing (which will really shake the world economy). We'll see robotic assistants in the medical field, but only very simple things like preparing surgical trays and cleaning instruments. Doctors and nurses aren't going anywhere. Whenever I see people predicting a huge change in "the next 20 years" I almost always think they are full of it. Radical change isn't predictable, and people never take into account human momentum or infrastructure requirements. - Dan G

This is truly astounding and upsetting. I wonder how our usual conservative posters feel about this? Is it okay with them, or do they also see deliberate lying to the public as unacceptable? - Dan G

You mean the fault in the reasoning that you predict he will use in a year? - Dan G

Sure, just like when the government promised they would delete those gun purchase records. I assume that no government data ever gets deleted. - Dan G

Why is asking the government to avoid recording protesters a double standard? - Dan G

Half of the roof off my barn. There hadn't been a storm. Microburst or aliens, apparently. - Dan G

We can always Netflix old episodes of The West Wing and pretend it's real. - Dan G

Well, I'm sure there will be lots of lucrative contracts given to Trump's associates in the construction industry. Whether they will build anything remains to be seen. - Dan G

I think you should be replying to millertime. He's the one modding his diesel to belch smog. - Dan G

Nice. Your position is that diesel engines users are constantly having to replace parts because of these environmental laws? Why on Earth would anyone use a diesel engine? They seem so unreliable and expensive to maintain! How many times have you had to replace any of the internal components of your diesel engine? - Dan G

What is your clearly theoretical understanding of how this process would affect your emissions? - Dan G

Except for the fact that he didn't. - Dan G

How do you make so much money when you don't know how to count? - Dan G

I guess I'm smarter and more ambitious than you. So are Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, apparently. Michael Moore, too. - Dan G

Ooh, I'd love to hear some stories about what you're seen at a hospital or grocery store that leads you to believe illegals are ruining our economy. Do tell! - Dan G

What really, really scares me is all the stuff that other people have said here, plus the fact that many people in our country (including the majority of Congress) will defend Trump no matter what, just because he has a R after his name. When he starts abusing his power for personal gain, tromping on the rights of anyone who opposes him, raping the environment for short term gain, destroying the economy, installing a police state, starting unnecessary wars, etc. a good number of people will be right behind him because it means their side won and they get to stick it to all the crybaby liberals. He's developed a cult of personality based on hyper-partisanship. That's what's really scary. - Dan G