That too is what amazes me: are there no senators with a clear mind any more, be they Republican or Democrat who insist on sound legal denominations for legal acts, are they all playing the Trump game, pleasing him with childish deference? Is this going in the direction of North Korea?
All we can do is try to survive this madness.
Have you seen anyone saying they are shocked or surprised?
I have not.
mmm
It sucks the dung-encrusted dicks of dead donkeys. The whole purpose of the GOP is now to give tax cuts to the wealthy, fuck over minorities, bloat the deficit, and find ways to blame it all on Democrats.
QFT, and poetry.
I’m still a bit surprised that they’re actually gutting medicaid.
And the ICE funding isn’t exactly a surprise, but the scale is more than I would’ve expected.
Between this and the overt efforts to curtail voting rights and voter access, I see it as the beginning of the end of the GOP and the old guard DEMs. The midterms will give us some indication, but it will take at least four years for the real damage to become apparent.
Well, then you might need some patience. Putin came to office as president in 2004 for the first time. He is still there and forcing his regime onto his people.
Not much else I can do.
I’m pretending I live in an active war zone.
The bill seems badly designed and is going to hurt Republican reelection chances. Presumably much of it will be changed eventually. Even what is known about the bill, polling was 20 points underwater.
It allegedly hurts those on Medicaid, Obamacare and food stamps. It greatly reduces funding for abortion and Planned Parenthood.
At a time when the US pays $1T in debt payments, it greatly increases the debt at a time of higher interest payments. Interest rates were lowered by foreign countries holdibg $9T in US securities because they were seen as stable. Trump’s tariff formula punished countries that invested in US debt rather than goods. And Trump has offended many foreign countries. These have every incentive to seek less volatile markets, especially since some Trump advisors want to default on this loaned money by charging new taxes which means America wouldn’t pay what it had promised to pay on these investments. Accordingly, America’s credit rating will go down more and interest payments will rise. Trump’s first term budget had some stimulus for growth. This has little. Mainly lower taxes for those who have plenty of income.
An appalling bill, and there are probably worse things about it than have been revealed. It likely continues the anti-intellectualism that has consumed the Republicans and affects universities and the scientific research that has fueled American productivity. What does the US and Silicon Valley gain by making STEM careers seem less attractive? The bill is good for China…
I’ve been given to understand that some of the bill doesn’t kick in until after the mid term elections.
For the record, and to clarify this:
Medicaid is a health insurance program for low-income Americans, jointly administered by the Federal government and the individual states. Most Americans who receive their health insurance and other benefits from Medicaid are under the age of 65. It’s somewhat analogous to other assistance programs for people with little or no income (SNAP food assistance, housing assistance, etc.) - in order to qualify, you can’t be making much money, and you have to regularly re-qualify to remain on the program.
Medicare is the Federal health insurance program for Americans age 65 and above. There is no income qualification for being on Medicare. It’s more analogous to Social Security retirement benefits: you qualify when you reach a certain age, assuming that you (or your spouse) paid in at least a token amount to the system via payroll taxes during your working years.
But, muddying the water, if you need long-term residential care (a.k.a. a nursing home), Medicare doesn’t cover that. However, if you don’t have the money/savings to pay for a nursing home on your own, Medicaid will play for that long-term care, at the same time that Medicare will pay for your doctor bills and hospital bills.
(Yes, some very bright person gave two very different Federal health insurance programs, which were created at about the same time, extremely similar names.)
There are fundamentally zero Democrats in Congress who are “going along with Trump.” But, as the minority party in both chambers, there isn’t a whole lot that they can do to fundamentally change the bill, or prevent its passage.
Republican Senators (and Representatives), on the other hand, are largely kissing Trump’s ring, even if they don’t like him, and oppose things like this bill, because they want to keep their jobs, and they afraid of him (and, frankly, afraid of being attacked by Trump’s rabid supporters). Senator Thom Tillis (North Carolina) stood up to Trump while the Senate was debating the bill, and then announced that he would not be running for re-election.
I guess I read that OP as wondering why people weren’t more outraged. And to me, outrage requires at least a little bit of shock and surprise.
My answer is basically - I’m not outraged because I’m not surprised. This is exactly what the voters voted for, and one of the main tenets of democracy is that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
Nitpick: 2000. Technically December 31st 1999. With a small cosmetical pause where he swapped places with Medvedev between 2009 and 2012.
If that means that a real fascist can stay in power for 25 years or more, considering trump is 79, that adds up to 104.
This is not correct. There have been grassroots protests, against Trump, and his various policies, in cities and towns across the U.S. for the past six months.
But, the reality is that, if you group (a) Americans who are Trump fans, and who support him hurting people that they don’t like, with (b) Americans who just don’t pay much attention to things, unless and until they are immediately and directly affected by them, that adds up to a substantial majority.
A minority are angry and scared, and they are speaking out and protesting. They are a minority, and the way that government works in the U.S., it’s very difficult for a minority – even a vocal, vehement minority – to effect change, when the majority is happy with the government’s direction.
Yeah, it’s the worst thing ever.
It affects my job directly, as I work in the nonprofit development space as a federal grants manager. This bill not only slashes federal funding, it also is going to slash corporate foundation giving by billions of dollars. I’ve never seen anything like it in fifteen years of grants. We have an administration actively trying to destroy non-profits.
I think the fact that it’s one big bill is intentional because it deliberately obscures what’s actually in it, and also creates confusion about how to fight it. My husband and I had an in-depth conversation yesterday about the best way to approach our legislators - oppose the bill entirely on old-school Republican grounds? Oppose the most important things onl liberal grounds? What are the most important things?
I wish you understood the scale and sheer unrelenting nature of the changes being forced on this country. It’s not one bad thing. It’s five hundred. It’s a new thing every day. It’s an assault on every level of the status quo, breaking the law in more ways than one can even keep track. It’s difficult for me to sort out what things to prioritize or even what the real consequences are going to be.
I’m on the fence about what purpose a protest might serve, but I have a young child and every effort of my energy is focused on protecting him, including protecting him from having a Mom dead or in political prison. Beyond writing letters and trying to keep my agency from losing staff funding, I’m very much keeping my head down right now.
How can one explain that people elect a government that makes their lives so much harder? Cuts in medical care, deterioration in living standards, especially for people who already have little money? Why do these people elect a government that shamelessly supports the rich by taking money away from the poor?
Most of the focus is on Medicaid cuts and other social programs, but they are also gutting critical research science, education, and climate/meteorological modeling and assessment:
So much for being the global leader in science or making even mouth-noises about abating or adapting to the impacts of climate heating.
It’s not even going to be a net benefit for Alaska. This is purely about her getting short term gains to benefit her 2028 reelection campaign and not getting slammed by the AK Republican Party for not supporting Trump. She’s putting her own career over duty to country and even the long term benefit of her constituents.
This has been happening for the last eight years and yet the corporate media is still reluctant to let the ‘F-word’ pass their lips for fear of sounding hyperbolic even when Trump openly declares that he’s going to be a dictator and muses about a third term with GOP operatives musing about Constitutional loopholes which could legally justifying it. Historians and scholars of autocracy and fascism are leaving the country because of the clear historical parallels they are witnesses. This is happening in real time, and virtually nobody in a position of authority is doing anything to effectively halt it, certainly not the oligarch class who are jockeying with each other to supplicate Trump and fête with ‘gifts’ in the form of contributing to his inaugural festivities and buying millions of dollars of ‘TRUMP Coin’ and other dubious crypto ‘investments’ in what is the most naked display of corruption in the history of the country.
This assumes that Republicans are concerned about playing on a fair field for future elections instead of ramping up voter suppression, gerrymandering the fuck out of districts in states they control, and just denying the validity of any election where they lose.
But there are plenty who aren’t resisting all that much, and from the top down. Adam Schiff can make his cute ‘walk & talk’ videos critiquing the Trump administration but he’s still accepting big bags of money by the same cryptobros who are also boosting Trump in hope of getting government backing for their fake money scams. Chuck Schumer is still waiting for Trump’s approval rating to drop below some magical threshold. John Fetterman is a MAGA Republican in all but name. For the few senators and representatives who are actively and energetically speaking out (and sometimes getting removed, detained, and handcuffed) for asking questions, most are just keeping their heads down and hoping to keep networking for post-government consluting opportunities and use ‘insider information’ to make canny investments. Yes, I do mean Nancy Pelosi, Ro Khanna, and John Hickenlooper, among others.
Stranger
I actually do too. I do not think the GOP will survive this – unless voting is destroyed (surely not impossible). The old Dems are part of why we are here, and they, I think, will be swept aside as well. I get, oh, three or four a day, pleas for money from candidates nationwide. I don’t know what list they bought, but all of them are young. Some are also gay, or minority, or both, but they are all young. They all gleam with fervour, and they are all left of the Dem center, which is, in reality, the center of the country.