Destroying Obamacare: An illustration of an obsession

My personality is such that once I start work on solving a problem or fixing some thing, however trivial it is, I will carry it out to its conclusion, usually working on it straight with hardly a break. This is true with yard work, work around the house, writing projects, science and math problems, anything. Once I start, and as long as I believe that I can succeed and that effort and my own skills should be sufficient in arriving at a satisfactory solution, it becomes a kind of obsession and I will plug away until I see it through to the end.
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The US-Saudi-UAE-Sudan axis of violence

The latest travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration adds Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela to the former list of countries (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria) but dropped Sudan. Why add Chad? Who the hell knows? The addition of North Korea and Venezuela seems, as is the case with Iran, to be out of spite at the refusal of those countries to bend to US coercion. Adding North Korea and Venezuela to the list also deflects criticisms that the administration is targeting Muslim-majority countries.
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Exactly who is the crazy rocket man?

Sergey Lavrov describes the one thing that is preventing the US from attacking North Korea

North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons is preventing the U.S. from launching a first strike against the rogue nation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview.

“The Americans won’t strike because they know for sure — rather than suspect — that it has atomic bombs,” Lavrov said Sunday on Russia’s NTV television. “I’m not defending North Korea right now, I’m just saying that almost everyone agrees with this analysis.”

Lavrov said the U.S. attacked Iraq “solely because they had 100 percent information that there were no weapons of mass destruction left there,” refuting arguments the American government made at the time.

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I did not know this

As the Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump try to round up 50 votes to pass the Graham-Cassidy health care denying bill in opposition to pretty much everyone except themselves and their most rabid supporters, they are trying to bribe those senators who are as yet reluctant to support it, such as Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, by carving out special provisions for that state that would make it more palatable to her.
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Trump and the US military have ramped up the the carnage in Syria

While Donald Trump gets attention by saying outrageous things, what has largely been unnoticed is that he has rapidly escalated the bombing attacks on targets in Syria with a corresponding increase in the number of civilian casualties. Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept writes about a report from Human Rights Watch about the most recent killings of civilians in two attacks.
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The football reactions to Trump come in

There has been intense interest in what professional football teams would do in the wake of Donald Trump’s tirade against Colin Kaepernick and other players who are protesting police brutality, with some TV stations showing the field during the anthem to see what each team had decided to do. The local team the Cleveland Browns saw saw at least 20 of their players kneel in protest.

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Trump, racism, and sports

Donald Trump has suddenly started waging a war on sports figures, taking aim at those who have started the practice of kneeling instead of standing for the national anthem before games to draw attention to police brutality. (The question of why the national anthem is played at all before such events is a topic that I discussed earlier and argued that it should be abandoned but that is a digression.) When Donald Trump suddenly goes on a tear against what seems like a randomly selected target, one has to always ask oneself whether this is genuine grievance or whether he is using the issue to distract from some other issue. There have been suggestions that Trump, or at least his advisors, to distract people’s attention from failures or other setbacks. If that is the case here, what could that be?
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Trump’s final push to undermine health care for tens of millions

In his 80-minute speech last night at the rally in support of Luther Strange in the Alabama US senate primary race, Donald Trump railed at those senators who were balking at supporting the Graham-Cassidy bill, the latest Republican push in their attempt to undermine health care for many Americans. There was one item that stuck out at me, though, and that was when he said:
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