Trump’s Weary Defenders Face Fresh Worries

[Maj. Bill Martin]

It is hard if not impossible to "get the job done" if no one believes you. In a free society leaders can only lead when people trust them.

Not really.  The office of the presidency has legal authority, and that legal authority exists whether "people trust him" or not.  For example, Gorsuch is in hearings to become the next Justice of the Supreme Court because he was nominated by Trump.  Whether people trust him or not, that process keeps chugging along.  Likewise, he has the authority to make appointments to the bureaucracy, issue Executive Orders, command the military, and sign or reject legislation.  Those powers all exist and can be exercised regardless of the hubbub.

And in a weird way, all the hubbub makes Republicans so desperate to focus on substance that they seem more willing than usual to back anything of his that is substantive -- like they're relieved to be dealing with that stuff rather than tweets.

[Smokin Joe]

Yes. I don't know the solution. I don't want to see the truly deserving and needy left to die on the street. Replacing all welfare with "universal basic income" is an interesting idea IMO.

I think we can all agree that we need to stop new entitlements at the very least.

And we all know people who are wasting their lives and the government's money collecting SSDI checks and doing nothing.

Well, the person I know who gets SSDI will never walk again. I don't know anyone, personally, who collects who isn't disabled. I have little doubt there is fraud out there, as for any government program, but I have no first-hand knowledge of any.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Well, the person I know who gets SSDI will never walk again. I don't know anyone, personally, who collects who isn't disabled. I have little doubt there is fraud out there, as for any government program, but I have no first-hand knowledge of any.

A friend of a friend of my wife collects SSDI for being "bipolar". 

While mental illness is a very real thing, knowing this guy I think if he got his ass out of his parents house and got a job, he might feel better. But I'm no psychologist I guess.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Well, the person I know who gets SSDI will never walk again. I don't know anyone, personally, who collects who isn't disabled. I have little doubt there is fraud out there, as for any government program, but I have no first-hand knowledge of any.

I do.  It is becoming increasingly common to get it for mental illnesses -- particularly depression.  All that takes is a complicit shrink of which there are many.

I also know people who have worked their whole life, and suddenly, because of a lack of available work, that bum knee magically prevents them from working.  It becomes the equivalent of permanent unemployment.  On a personal note, I have a bad knee that means I can't run, and I had a neighbor who works of the VA insisting that I apply to get partial disability.  I keep telling him "I'm not disabled", and he keeps saying "you should be able to get at least 25% with that."  I'm a freaking lawyer -- it doesn't prevent me from working at all.

Your tax dollars at work.

[Chosen Daughter]

I know he should but he won't.  But will we eventually get tired of over-reacting and end of the world stuff .... I can live with him tweeting every day if he will get the job done.

You can?  This is serious stuff.  He tweets randomly.  My guess is he is bound to tweet matters of National Security.

And worse yet is that Democrats know they can coerce him into a twitter storm.  He is manipulated by the press and "fake news".

[Smokin Joe]

I do.  It is becoming increasingly common to get it for mental illnesses -- particularly depression.  All that takes is a complicit shrink of which there are many.

There are some who are clinically depressed, and sometimes that has a bad outcome, but there was a time when to be so was considered unacceptable and those who could at least made the attempt to appear otherwise. Now, there is no reason not to wallow in it, except perhaps personal standards. Where I see that biting people where they sit, is in laws getting passed sooner or later which remove certain Rights and privileges from people who have those diagnoses. Point to the Control folks.

I also know people who have worked their whole life, and suddenly, because of a lack of available work, that bum knee magically prevents them from working.

Always a temptation, especially at the end of an oil boom, but I'm not a scammer. I think the end of the 99 weeks segued into SSDI for some. Others got back to work.

  It becomes the equivalent of permanent unemployment.  On a personal note, I have a bad knee that means I can't run, and I had a neighbor who works of the VA insisting that I apply to get partial disability.  I keep telling him "I'm not disabled", and he keeps saying "you should be able to get at least 25% with that."  I'm a freaking lawyer -- it doesn't prevent me from working at all.

Your tax dollars at work.

Sounds like you had a government employee recommending you collect a government check. He's riding for the brand anyway. What people forget, though, is that we are the government. That isn't government money, it's our money.
Some of us would just as soon save it in the first place.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I do.  It is becoming increasingly common to get it for mental illnesses -- particularly depression.  All that takes is a complicit shrink of which there are many.

I also know people who have worked their whole life, and suddenly, because of a lack of available work, that bum knee magically prevents them from working.  It becomes the equivalent of permanent unemployment.  On a personal note, I have a bad knee that means I can't run, and I had a neighbor who works of the VA insisting that I apply to get partial disability.  I keep telling him "I'm not disabled", and he keeps saying "you should be able to get at least 25% with that."  I'm a freaking lawyer -- it doesn't prevent me from working at all.

Your tax dollars at work.

And where does that get these people? They can sit at their house and do absolutely nothing all day. It's not even enough to take a vacation with. 

Mark Steyn made the most brilliant argument against welfare I've ever heard in my life: that it enables people to completely waste their lives and existences.