If a lowly Private in the Army was tasked with invasion plans for China the sensible and patriotic thing to do would be refuse the commission based on his inability to complete the task without the high probability of failure and excessive casualties resulting.
Certainly part of military responsibility is to know your limitations and avoid having your inadequacies and lack of training specific to the task endangering the mission.
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Fantastic advice for our clueless Commander in Chief!
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The office betting pool is now open for wagers as to when Trump will become disenchanted with him.
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I can guarantee you that if the Admiral had given the Asshole-elect (aka, Cadet Bone Spur) a bad prognosis, heâd be doing recruiting physicals in Butte, MT. Sad.
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We talk a big game in this country about veterans and how important they are to our society. If you really believe that, you canât support Jackson to head the VA. Jackson himself should do the decent thing and refuse to accept the position. If the VA is as important as we all say it is, if itâs as important as Fox made it out to be when it cherry picked certain issues there to make him look bad, then you canât have a completely unqualified novice run the place. If Shulkin is right and the real game here is privatization, then itâs even more imperative to stand up. I know veterans were a big pro-Trump demographic, but we Democrats donât care if segments of American voters donât like us, weâre going to help them anyway. No Democrat can support this nomination in good conscience. Our veterans deserve better. This also represents an opportunity to highlight to Trump supporters how Trumpism hurts them. One can make a good argument that Trumpist policies on health care, the environment, business regulation and trade have hurt Trumper country as much (or more) than liberal land. This is an example of one such potential impact.
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Trumpâs disenchantment started setting in in the the midst of tweeting he was nominating him.
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He SHOULD have been wary. First because he doesnât have the experience and secondly, Trump doesnât hesitate to bully and then fire anyone that doesnât get down on bended knee. The good Doc has been the WH physician for three DECADES. What a sweet gig.
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Trump supporters will take one for the Gipper so long as black and brown people take it up the ass even harder. They donât give a damn about effieciency or fairness or jobs or tax cuts. Theyâre still pissed off you canât pack a decent picnic lunch and go watch a good olâ lynching.
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Heâs not being asked to sit on a museum board or something. Running a large organization takes a set of skills heâs never had to acquire. He was nominated by a fool, but heâs not a fool himself and to accept is a huge, consequential failure of judgment. He certainly had the option to politely decline, or firmly refuse. Everyone would sympathize if he suffered for that. But his decision contributes to widespread dysfunction in the government and itâs a disservice to the veterans.
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Jackson is an Aggie. There is always a bit of Aggie bashing that goes on in Texas (Rick Perry anyone?). My son attends A&M and while I thought Jackson went overboard praising Trumpâs health, if he goes through with this I do wish him well. I think there are questions due to the fact that he has been the physician to POTUS for awhile and I think he travels with him as part of entourage so he has been in the bubble for over a year.
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maybe he just didnât want to feel Trumpâs prostate next year.
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I think the economic argument Trump sold to the rust belt was zero-sum economics: that non-whites can only succeed at the expense of whites, and conversely, whites can only succeed if there is someone below them. America First meant âwhite folks firstâ. Hence the focus on industries of symbolic and historical importance like steel and coal and a trade focus on China and Mexico. It was a proxy for addressing demographic change that GOP land fears will place whites in a permanent political minority status.
The evidence of Trumpism tells us that many white voters are souring on Trumpism as a governing philosophy. Using an issue like running the VA would be an effective way to highlight how Trumpism is a scam. Youâre not going to stop people from being racist or having tribal tendencies. That change comes with time and with a change at the cultural level. But what you can do is show them that targeting one group over others isnât effective and is often a scam used by the powerful to exploit the weak.
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Nowadays it seems you donât get the dreaded âyouâre firedâ from Trump, but rather from Twitter.
Seems pretty clear from seeing Schulkin on teevee that Kelly set up Trump to fire him, but Trump wimped out and did it via Twitter.
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I actually think it speaks well of the guy that he was skeptical of his own qualifications.
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No. He has already stated that he will retire his commission.
âJackson will resign his commission and retire from active duty before he is confirmed as Veterans Affairs Secretary, a senior White House official told CNN.â
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LIMP. DICK.
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Thatâs a tough sale to the target audience you are discussing. Because they inherently see the Democratic governing philosophy as doing exactly the same thing, only they perceive themselves as the target.
They key, IMO, is to point out how Trumpism is taking things away from them. Specifically regarding healthcare. The data we got from the big Tuesday win in VA, NJ and everywhere else, plus the data we got out of Alabama, and recent polling shows the same thingâŚthe issue that voters actually want to talk about is healthcare. A lot of Dems are resisting this, because hey, weâve tried for a decade to get voters to talk about healthcare and they didnât want to listen. Now however, they are facing rising premiums, rural hospitals being closed, the price of basic meds rising and constant talk about cutting/eliminating Medicare and Medicaid. OhâŚand just to really spice it up, with the collapse of the CSR legislation, premiums nationwide are going to spike about 18-20%âŚin October. Right ahead of the election.
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From what I am reading about Shulkin, he may have been pretty much the last name on Trumpâs list last year, but Shulkin actually knows how to run a hospital, and is committed to staying connected to patient care - he still sees patients.
Shulkinâs all about efficiency, and keeping to the core mission of the VA â heâs not opposed to sending patients to the local mall for new eyeglasses or a hearing aid, if it means that veterans who need prosthetics or treatment for PTSD can get what they need faster.
Watching Shulkin with Chris Hayes last night, and hearing the details about the trip to the UK with his wife, something finally clicked for me: the political appointees were gaslighting Shulkin. And it worked.
Somewhere I read that Shulkin had recommended Jackson for an Undersecretary position, an appointment that would have made more sense than putting a man with no management or administrative experience at the top of this huge bureaucracy with a unique patient population. Saying ânoâ to Trump might mean heâd find himself hustled out of his WH physician office, but that canât be the worst thing in the world, can it? I think, as a veteran himself, heâs likely to be far more disturbed if it turns out his performance as head of the VA undermines and lowers the quality of veteransâ care.
That being said, it would be interesting to know who the other choices were â with Trump, itâs probably a better than even bet that the people under consideration might be eve worse. You know, kinda like knowing that if Trump gets booted out of office, Mike Pence gets to come in from the benchâŚerrrgh.
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That change is not coming. Slaves were freed by Amendment 153 years ago. Blacks were given the right to vote 148 years ago. The Civil Rights Act was 54 yrears ago. Our society has been given more than ample time after passage of landmark Amendments and legislation to demonstrate racism and bigotry can be cycled out of our collective consciousness. Weâve failed the test miserably. Our bigotry is ingrained in our DNA, it resides in our very marrow. In 100 years the very same 40% of the populace that thinks blacks are inferior and dangerous will still believe it. Some things never change. I imagine there are people like you in the Middle East, proclaiming one day Jews and Palestinians will all get along in harmony. Put your $100 bucks down on the table that is happening, too.
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