Being Libertarian | Ahmadinejad Enters Iranian Presidential Race Being Libertarian As Iran gears up for its May 19th election, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entered his name as a last-minute candidate. The bid for the presidency has international and domestic ramifications; his candidacy is a direct challenge to Iran's ... |
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Ahmadinejad Enters Iranian Presidential Race - Being Libertarian
The Tennessee Valley Chapter of the Libertarian Party of Tennesseewill be hosting the State Libertarian Party Chairman, Tom Arnold, as guest speaker on April 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Casual Pint, 5550 TN-153 in Hixson.
Mr. Arnold became involved with the Libertarian Party in 2012. He is working toward free and fair ballot access for everyone. He said hopes to have Libertarians on the ballot across Tennessee in the next two years.
"Tom has a heart for young people. He is focused on mentoring the future leaders of the party to redirect the current course of government. His goal is that we could live free from as many governmental constraints as possible.
"Tom was born on the fourth of July and has been a lover of liberty ever since. He is an eighth generation Tennessean and currently lives with an addlepated Sheltie on a 13 acre farm in Jackson county. Tom is a philosopher, poet, political hack, farmer and highway contractor," officials said.
Mr. Arnold said his favorite quote on liberty is from Walt Whitman's Caution:Resist much, obey little; Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved; Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.
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State Chairman Tom Arnold Speaks To The Tennessee Valley Libertarian Party - The Chattanoogan
Being Libertarian | US Drops Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan Being Libertarian The United States military dropped the mother of all bombs, the largest non-nuclear bomb the U.S. has ever utilized in combat, on an ISIS target in Afghanistan on Thursday. According to the Pentagon, The GBU-43 bomb was dropped around 7:30 pm local ... US Drops Mother of All Bombs on ISIS [VIDEO] |
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US Drops Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan - Being Libertarian
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters, April 4, Republican lawmakers are having productive talks on a new health-care reform bill but would not say if a new proposal would be put forth. (Reuters)
Republicans haven't been able to replace Obamacare, because they think the problem with it, metaphorically speaking, is that the food is terrible and the portions are too small.
That, of course, is what Woody Allen had to say about life in Annie Hall. But the same kind of contradiction you hate something, and want more of it is why Republicans haven't been able to agree on anything other than that they want to be able to saythat they repealed Obamacare. That might work on for campaigning, but, as we've seen, it's a flop in office. President Trump on Tuesday in what's become something of a weekly tradition again promisedhis party would strike a deal. But even if Republicans keep trying to come to terms on a compromise, they're going to keep tripping over the same problem. That's because no matter how much dealmaking prowess you might have, you can't make one if people want fundamentally different things.
Now, when it comes to Obamacare, there are generally two types of Republicans: ones who despise everything about it, and ones who understand nothing about it. The first group are libertarians who want to get rid of the law root-and-branch. They don't think the federal government should play any part in helping people getcoverage, or telling insurers what that has to be. Instead, they'd like to go back to a world where the sick are mostly on their own, and insurance companies are mostly free to discriminate against them. This, together with higher deductibles, is what they believe is the best way to keep costs and premiums down for everybody else. The idea, you see, is that people will spend less overall if they have to spend more out-of-pocket, and if that's too much for them, they can always be put in a slightly subsidized high-risk pool.(Emphasis on the word slightly. The Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt says that the technical term for the funding in the GOP's latest proposal is chump change.")
In other words, they want to make insurance more affordable for the young and healthy by making it unaffordable for the old and sick, and worse for everyone.
The second group are so-called moderates who oppose Obamacare entirely because of politics, not policy. Which is to say that they attack the unpopular parts of the law, like penalizing people for not getting insurance, at the same time that they support the popular parts, like banning insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. What they don't get, though, is that you can't have the latter without the former. If you're going to force insurers to cover sick people, then you have to force healthy people to sign up too so that premiums don't explode. And if you're going to force healthy people to sign up, then you need to help them be able to afford it.
And that brings us to the GOP's real problem. It's that a lot of Republicans secretly kind of like Obamacare, or at least they like what it does. They don't want to get rid of the way it's covered sick people or expanded coverage or let kids stay on their parent's insurance until they're 26 years old. The only thing they do want to change well, other than the name and the individual mandate is the way that premiums and deductibles have continued to march ever higher. But that, whether they realize it or not, is actually an argument that Obamacare hasn't gonefar enough. That we need bigger subsidies so people can buy better coverage that doesn't make them pay as much out-of-pocket.
So how do you reconcile the idea that the healthy should pay more and the sick pay too much with the belief that the healthy should pay less and the sick be taken care of? You don't. At least not when you're in power. When you're out of it, you can at least hide these differences behind the amorphous mantra of repeal and replace. But not anymore, not whenit'sclear that there's a philosophicaldivide between Republicans who thinkthe federal government shouldn't be involved in covering people, and ones like Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy who believethat there's a widespread recognition that the federal government, Congress, has created the right for every American to have health care. That used to be what Republicans and Democrats argued about, but, now that Obamacare has made people expect more from the government, it's what Republicans and other Republicans argue about today.
And there are going to be large portions of that.
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Republicans can't find a way to repeal Obamacare because too many of them secretly love it - Washington Post
The battle for the Senate in 2018 is caught between two opposing forces: math and President Trump.
Let's start with math. Senate Democrats have a heckuva challenge defending their lawmakers in the 2018 midterm election: By virtue of their 2012 victories in some swing and red-leaning states, they now have to defend 25 seats, 10 of which are in states that Trump won.
In some states, like the one Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is trying to win reelection in, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 40 points! By comparison, Republicans only haveto defend nineseats, one or two of which could be considered vulnerable.
It's feasible that Republicans could expand their 52-seat majority, and, if they had a near-perfect run, get to the coveted filibuster-proof 60.
On the other hand, you have Trump. The party in power normally gets blowback in the first midterm election of a new president.And this president is at historically low approval ratingsthis early on, with warning signs that traditional GOP voters aren't thrilled with his and Congress's performance so far.
Here's another potential warning sign for Senate Republicans that Trump's shadow could undermine their position of strength: Some top potential Senate candidates are turning down the opportunity to challenge vulnerable Senate Democrats.
In Pennsylvania, four-term Rep. Patrick Meehan (R) was considering,then declined, to challenge Sen. Bob Casey. Meehan would have been a bigger name than the two state lawmakers and one borough councilman who have jumped in so far to try to challenge Casey.
In Indiana, a state Trump won by 19 points, Rep. Susan Brooks (R) said she wouldn't try to challenge Sen. Joe Donnelly (D). The IndyStar said Brooks would have been a potentially formidable opponent, though it reports two other GOP House lawmakers are considering a run as well: Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita.
In Wisconsin, a state Trump won by less than a percentage point, leading potential challenger Rep. Sean P. Duffy (R) said he won't run against Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D). This is not the right time to run for Senate, he said in a statement, pointing to his eight kids. A couple of state lawmakers, a teacher, a Marine veteran and a businessman are all considering running, which could create a messy primary.
Republicans' recruitment struggles in Montana is related to Trump but in a different way. Former representativeRyan Zinke (R) was thought to be Republicans' strongest candidate to challenge one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators, Jon Tester, in a state Trump won by 29 points. Then Trump picked Zinke to be secretary of theinterior, and it isn't clear who will challenge Tester beside a first-term state senator who recently announcedhe's in.
November 2018 is still a year and a half away, so there's no rule that Senate candidates have to get in right now. But already, several potential top-tier candidates in Trump states have thought about challenging Democrats, then decided not to. That doesn't help Republicans counter a nascent narrative, both in GOP circles and outside of it, that Trump could weigh them down in 2018.
This is all playing out in the context of Democrats flush with momentum and money from a liberal base stoked to challenge Trump. Many of these Senate Democrats reported this week that they raised a record amount of money for their states a year and a half before the election. (Though Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada kept pace with them, too.)
And a closer-than-expected congressional election in a red district in Kansas and a coming one in Georgia suggest that voters in traditional Republican districts aren't thrilled with their party's performance in Washington so far.
Of course, Republicans have more opportunities to knock off Democrats than just these couple ofstates we listed. And Democrats, who only have two-ish Republican states where they can feasibly play in, don't have candidates yet either.
Butsince we're going to spend the next 574 days trying to assess which opposing force is stronger in the 2018 Senate midterms math or Trump's unpopularity let's plant an early flag and say that, so far, Trump's unpopularity appears to be weighing on Senate Republicans.
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Do Senate Republicans have a Trump recruiting problem? - Washington Post