The GOP got where it is today by repeatedly replacing establishment Republicans with more conservative republicans, until ‘right wing nutjob’ became the baseline. I no longer believe that replacing Republicans with corporate democrats will make things change. Slow the bleeding, maybe, but not change. Replacing corporate Democrats with progressives is the only way we’re going to move the needle now.
It’s giving me vibes like…other people have been signing stuff in Trump’s name that he only discovers later, or that he’s signed a bunch of stuff that - discovering later - he wants to blame on other people.
Or maybe he just thinks he was President during Biden’s term. But I’m pretty sure even Trump can’t govern via social media post.
The landscapers and cleaning staff are probably fine people.
Dunno, man: 40% of Americans believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Only 2% of them believe it’s flat, though. We are not an information-rich culture.
Resistance comes from oppression, and right wing communities are not friendly spaces for women. MTG has played “one of the good ones,” but Trump still won’t let her run for Senate. God knows what other harassment her peers impose (especially because she has been batshit in her role). She graduated from small-town nepo-baby to the billionaire crowd, and it’s probably been a shock how little those people care about her opinions.
The bootlickers may see inequality, but they attribute it to fickle whims of those in power rather than any kind of system. If you believe that success or failure comes from the patronage of the powerful, then ingratiating yourself to them is a rational strategy for getting ahead.
legit places…
My university, 23andMe, Transunion, Equifax, CapitalOne, United Healthcare…
Title says “in,” means within the grounds of the facility that these protesters were denied access. “At” would probably be a better preposition, or maybe ‘around.’ “In” implies that they’ve banned detainees from prayer.
Benjamin Franklin: It is better that 100 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
Donald Trump: It is better that 100 innocents starve than that one grifter eat cake.
Good news, then: Ozempic about to get cheap.
The grand jury didn’t really have any choice: it was a turkey sandwich, and they only indict ham.
Shit’s woke, yo! Put a tariff on it!
The people seeing the biggest dollar increases will be those above 400% of poverty level - $62,600 for singles, $128,600 family of 4 - because the “Big Beautiful Bill” brings back the cap on ACA subsidies. In my area, the benchmark ‘SLCSP’ is $1150/month (single). 2025, someone making $70k would have paid $560 for that, after tax credits; 2026, they’re on the hook for the whole bill. Family of 4 making $130k is going to pay $3045/month in 2026; would have paid $1030 in 2025.
There’s big percentage changes up and down the scale, but bringing back “the cliff” essentially targets self-employed people who are finally getting ahead.
So, the US GDP is about $30T. Walmart revenue is about $700B, or 2.3% of GDP. Amazon, 2.1%. United Healthcare, 1.3%. Roughly one out of every 20 dollars spent in the US goes to Walmart or Amazon. That’s kind of terrifying.
I have to believe the best times are ahead. I look back at any point in US history and there was more hatred for different people, more formal oppression of those people, more imperialist aggression. Maybe, there were times when certain segments of the white male population could get material goods more easily, but that was often at the cost of just just accepting poverty for everyone else. Not to mention literal famine and plagues.
There’s a whole world of people out there making shit better all the time. Curing incurable diseases, building alternatives to fossil fuels, converting crowded streets to greenways. There’s a lot of political pressure trying to preserve the bad old ways, even trying to bring back long-forgotten plagues, but we are still finding better ways to do things despite those malicious fucks.
In contrast to the housing bubble, where a lot of the value was in overpriced houses sold to individuals, this overpricing is almost entirely in tech stocks, and tech stocks are almost entirely owned by by the wealthiest 10%, even 1%. The tech billionaires have limited ability to divest themselves of their own overpriced companies and absolutely will lose money.
None of them are going bankrupt, they’ll all be just fine when the market recovers in a few years, because that’s the nature of capitalism. A bunch of peons, who convinced themselves that the bubble-value of their 401k meant it was safe to retire, will suffer, will have to go back to work - if you’re not an oligarch, losing money is painful.
Nine months ago, I’d have said the same thing about Medicare, but here we are today with a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts coming, on top of the trillion in Medicaid. And MAGA seems super happy about it.
$170M is such small change. According to my local food bank, that’s barely enough to feed the entire state of Maine for a year.
They do care that I wear clothes. Ain’t nobody’s day improved by seeing more of my skin.
This seems most likely. Georgia isn’t a great place for residential rooftop solar, because power rates here are only $0.086/kWh, a lot of residences are buried in trees, and it rains 1 day in 3. But the people who are interested are mostly going to be Democratic-ish, anyway. The red state core is more interested in backyard, coal-fired generators.
ETA: Ironically, QCells recently expanded their solar panel plant in Georgia.
Republicans are always looking for small populations to fuck over. There’s only ~25M people on ACA, or about 7% of the population. The rules are complicated and mostly hidden behind automatic calculations done by marketplace websites, so most people’s experience is just that the website gives them a price list and they choose one to pay. Can’t tell if price hikes are due to actual insurance company rate hikes, changes in the tax credit structure, or their own increased income.
For politicians, it’s a pretty safe bet that the size of the affected population and obscurity of the cost structure will prevent any serious organized blowback. Insurance companies are going to be scapegoats for this.