How messed up are Trump Supporters?

[Angrboda]

Republicans are mischaracterizing nearly all their major policies. Why?

Republicans have mischaracterized just about every major policy on their agenda. The question is why. If they genuinely believe their policies are correct, why not defend them on the merits?

Consider the GOP tax cuts. Last year, Republicans said their bill would primarily benefit the middle class, pay for itself and raise President Trump’s taxes, among other claims.

Not one of these contentions is remotely true.

A more honest defense — and one occasionally revealed via accidentally-told-the-truth Kinsley gaffes — might have been something like: We want to let rich people keep more of their money, regardless of the cost to Uncle Sam. We want this both because we (unlike most of the public) think that’s fair, and also because our donors are demanding a return on their investment in us. Plus, maybe it’s a good thing to reduce government revenue; that gives us motivation to “starve the beast” and cut the safety net, which we think is a drag on the economy that protects people from the consequences of their poor life choices.

Likewise with family separations, a policy Trump is considering reviving.

In the spring, the administration systematically ripped immigrant children from their mothers’ breasts with no plan for tracking where they ended up or how to reunite these families. The rationale, as gaffingly revealed by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, was that such cruelty would deter asylum seekers.

But when voters recoiled, the administration explained things differently. Officials alternately lied that the policy was designed to help children, was actually a Democratic policy or didn’t exist at all.

Lately, the biggest GOP lies involve health care — the top midterm issue for voters — and especially how Republicans would treat Americans with costly medical issues.

The public has had ample opportunity to learn where Republicans stand on protections for those with preexisting conditions. The party spent the past eight years, after all, trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including these particular (very popular) provisions.

And while Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare legislatively, they’ve found other means to undermine its protections.

For instance, the Trump administration has expanded the availability of junk insurance. These cheap plans look like regular insurance but actually cover little to no care, something you would notice only if you read the fine print. Such policies are not required to accept enrollees with preexisting conditions or to pay claims related to preexisting conditions — even if the preexisting illness hadn’t even been diagnosed at the time of enrollment.

These policies threaten coverage another way, too. Because they siphon young, cheap and healthy people off the Obamacare exchanges, they drive up prices on (real) insurance and thereby put coverage further out of reach for people who are sicker and older.

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Additional troops set to join National Guard at Mexico Border

After initially praising the deployment, the president of the union representing Border Patrol agents, Brandon Judd, pronounced the Guard deployment “a colossal waste of resources.” Judd, a staunch Trump supporter, has urged a more muscular enforcement role for the troops.

When will the caravan reach the United States?

The caravan is still more than 1,000 miles away from U.S. territory, and the map below shows there’s a lot of Mexico left to traverse. If the group manages to advance 15 miles per day, it would take more than two months for the caravan to arrive at the Rio Grande. And that’s a lot of distance for families with children to cover.

That timeline changes significantly if caravan members manage to board buses, trucks or freight trains, in which case they could reach the U.S. border in less than a week. But that’s a major if, absent a significant fundraising effort to provide mass motorized transport.

(Washington Post)