If Trump were a clever populist, he"d demand universal healthcare for America | Ross Barkan

Donald Trump understood the average Republican voter well enough to disregard the party’s tired orthodoxies and still win the presidency. He figured out that most Republicans could care less about shredding entitlements and adhering blindly to Milton Friedman’s soulless economic agenda, as long as he was bashing immigrants. To this day, Trump still won’t fulfill Paul Ryan’s Ayn Randian fever dream of gutting Social Security and Medicare.

But he does promise to do Ryan’s bidding and repeal Obamacare, a move that is all but guaranteed, if successful, to make a lot more people who voted for him sick. This probably doesn’t worry Trump too much in the short term, since senior citizens in the West Virginian hollows and dead factory towns of Ohio can’t afford dues at Mar-a-Lago anyway. Republicans in Congress, unused to and uninterested in governing, want to tear up Barack Obama’s signature achievement as quickly as possible because that will fill the emptiness of a nihilist campaign vow.

Few rational people think Ryan’s American Health Care Act is anything but a disaster-in-waiting. Swapping a mandate for ungenerous tax credits and eventually killing the Medicaid expansion while preserving the most expensive and popular aspects of Obamacare (not discriminating against people with preexisting conditions and letting everyone under 26 remain on their parents’ health plans), the AHCA will strip coverage from 24 million people by 2026, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

Were Trump a cannier tactician – or just a very different man – he would try to co-opt a beleaguered Democrat party by actually bolstering Obamacare, triangulating to save his party’s historic majority. Imagine if Trump’s team seriously considered the flaws of the ACA and tore a page from the playbook of the most populist Democrats to address them.

We already know there’s an overlap between the people who voted for Obama and Bernie Sanders and those who eventually chose Trump. The desperate working class of this country, white and black and brown alike, are seeking answers as automation and globalization threatens to sideline more and more laborers forever. Trump can gratify his own galactic ego and do some good by actually saving them.

As it stands, Trump’s obsession with pushing Ryan’s catastrophic bill is the best gift an otherwise pathetic Democratic Party could envision. Republicans control every branch of government, two-thirds of governorships and far more state legislatures than Democrats, a level of dominance unseen in more than a half century. But the sooner any version of the AHCA becomes law – no sure thing as Senate Republicans and moderates in the House balk – the more furious the backlash against the party of Trump will be.

Democrats are giddy that Republicans are on the verge of owning a healthcare catastrophe. Smarter Republicans are catching on. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, usually a reliable ideologue, recently said voting for Ryan’s bill would put the Republican’s formidable House majority at risk.

As unlikely as this scenario would be, the Trump White House could heed Cotton’s warnings and change course. Support increasing subsidies for the lower and middle class people who truly find Obamacare unaffordable. Expand Medicaid coverage. Try to entice younger, healthier people to buy insurance or just force them. Discover the unreliable New York liberal lurking somewhere in that tanned hulk and back a cheap public option to compete with private insurers, driving prices down.

Rebrand the effort. Obamacare can become Trumpcare, except Trumpcare will actually work for everyone. For all his business failures, Trump does know something about marketing and reinvention. What’s the best way to stick it to his bête noire, Obama, and punish Democrats for good? Make Obamacare (Trumpcare) better.

It’s easy to snicker about a Republican president doing this. But Trump owes his party little, and its orthodoxies even less. He is a cult of personality, a ringmaster who can command his legions of followers to the end of the Earth, no matter what he says or does. The working class white Americans and Midwestern swing voters who put him in power won’t punish him for making government more generous and welcoming.

Trump can choose the courageous and practical path of attempting to usher in an era of affordable, universal healthcare coverage to a nation in profound need of both. Or he can punish the American people and his own party with Ryan’s dreadful legislation.

Just don’t expect him to choose wisely.

If Trump were a clever populist, he"d demand universal healthcare for America | Ross Barkan

Trump talks stamina on Dr Oz and says he"d "like to lose weight" – video

During an appearance on The Dr Oz Show, Donald Trump admitted he could lose some weight but said he felt ‘as good today as I did when I was 30’. On the show, which aired on Thursday, Dr Mehmet Oz concluded that Trump, who weighs 236 pounds, was a little overweight for his height. Trump’s campaign also released the results of his physical that said he had normal cholesterol and blood pressure

Trump talks stamina on Dr Oz and says he"d "like to lose weight" – video

If Euclid Played Video Video games This Is The App He"d Develop To Teach Geometry

There’s an easy way to discover geometry over the summer time. It is straightforward and enjoyable. Picture Euclidean geometry: the video game. If your encounter in high college geometry was something like mine, it probably sounds like torture. But games make learning entertaining.

These days, game and app developers are consistently creating a new sorts of studying components. But the way people discover hasn’t really altered. The ideal game makers understand that the point of digital understanding video games is not to change books, chalkboards, diagrams, or lectures, but rather, to supplement effectively worn techniques with new educating resources that weren’t feasible in the previous.

Take into account the function of Jean-Baptiste Huynh. He’s the guy who impressed so several folks with his ingeniously simple “DragonBox Algebra” app. By changing algebraic variables with cute photographs, he proved that even small kids could get fired up about Algebra. On regular, it took 41 minutes and 44 seconds for college students to master the standard operations of Algebra in the course of the Washington State Algebra Challenge employing the DragonBox App.

Soon after I wrote about DragonBox Algebra, Huynh and I kept in touch. We’d speak occasionally, but rarely about video games. Generally we’d examine far more abstract philosophical ideas about the way humans discover. We share a certain skepticism about numerous of the educational norms that most folks take for granted. For illustration, I’m especially doubtful about the notion of grade levels–or that kids are only able to comprehend some ideas at particular ages.

As an alternative, I believe it has to do with the ways we existing and articulate understanding. At youthful ages, kids are not ready for algebra the way that we presently teach it. But they are definitely prepared for algebraic contemplating. DragonBox Algebra showed a lot of of us that if we present material differently, even tiny little ones can effortlessly find out far more playful methods of executing and articulating basic algebra.

Huynh’s been quietly establishing a new game that tackles an additional mathematical subject that is notoriously tough to teach: Geometric proofs. His newest game for iOS and Android is referred to as “DragonBox Components.” Taking its inspiration from Euclid’s “Elements,” the game teaches geometric proofs employing the very same foundational framework laid out by the ancient Greek mathematician.

My six yr previous has been taking part in DragonBox Factors for a couple of days he’s training Euclidean geometric proofs and he’s only in very first grade. Of program, he doesn’t comprehend what he’s doing–that is, he cannot articulate what he’s undertaking utilizing the language we normally educate in substantial college. No variables. No formulas. No symbolic algebraic language that designed in the medieval planet, but by some means has remained trendy considering that the 16th Century. But nonetheless, he’s finding out pure Euclidean geometry taught via an updated digital manipulative: shinier, faster, and far more efficient. Gamers find out and investigate geometry by means of a hands on encounter of trial and error. I hated geometry homework, but I’m enjoying the game.

Huynh reminds us, once once more, that game based mostly finding out is not so much about altering what we learn. Right after all, Euclid’s factors is 23 Centuries previous. Nevertheless, with the exception of one particular-on-1 tutoring, we’ve never been capable to give learners with as a lot instantaneous feedback as video games can. Plus, by playing the game, learners understand how cummulative mastery final results in leveling-up–an understanding that is not only motivating, but also empowering.

This classic painting by Raphael is beautiful, but it also reminds me how extended it has been since we’ve up to date the processes via which we educate Euclid:

A Greek mathematician performing a geometric construction with a compass, from The School of Athens by Raphael. (Photo credit score: Wikipedia)

DragonBox Aspects makes use of the exact same method as DragonBox Algebra, it relies on cute characters and video game super powers to educate ancient ideas. For illustration, a triangle monster with 3 horns is a equilateral triangle (horns are kind of angle shaped). But players want to demonstrate that a triangle has like angles ahead of the triangle monster will get his or her horns. My six yr previous calls this procedure “the horn-inator.” He searches for approaches to activate it. The only way, of course, is to display that the triangle has matching angles. Kids don’t recognize they are proving anything at all, they are just following the rules of the video game program.

Any person with youngsters knows that they can learn a complicated video game’s rule method very speedily. Heck, they all learn language ahead of they can even talk: vocabulary, syntax, etc. What we typically fail to remember is that many of the items we educate in college are daily programs articulated in distinct approaches. Euclidean geometry, for illustration, is the seemingly self-evident foundation of the way humans have come to believe about measurable area (keep in mind that this conception of area has only existed considering that Descartes imagined “Euclidean Space” and laid the groundwork for Newtonian physics. Euclid just articulated a mathematical method. But that’s a longer conversation). Often, by just articulating factors in diverse techniques, comprehension becomes easy.

DragonBox Factors is a enjoyable, whimsical game that basically borrows a program from Euclid. As with Huynh’s preceding game, the artwork is pristine, the music is sharp, and the controls operate seamlessly. If your kids (or you) liked DragonBox Algebra, they’ll also like DragonBox Components. It is accessible for Android and iOS ($ five.99).

Jordan Shapiro is writer of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Greatest Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift’s Guidebook To Games And Learning For info on Jordan’s upcoming books and events click right here.

If Euclid Played Video Video games This Is The App He"d Develop To Teach Geometry