You should call your member of Congress and ask if they support this plan for "hundreds of billions" of cuts. If they tell you please contact me at TPM and let me know.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 2:58 PM
One of the central features of Trumpism is that Trump never wants to deal in pain. Not for people who might vote for him. Or at least, no pain to anyone who might vote for him … that they would blame on him. That’s why, at least in concept, he’s always said he’d never support cuts to Social Security or Medicare. That’s in concept of course. What happens down in the fine print of administrative decisions or omnibus tax bills is another matter. But the position in concept is still important and fairly consistent. But over the last couple weeks things have gone sideways in a pretty big way. And key players in his administration-in-the-making are now proposing massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Let’s go to Trump and Musk’s DOGE clown show. As you know, Trump has in some post-politics, performative sense authorized this government streamlining panel, run by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which will radically cut the size of the federal government and reduce its spending by at least one third — two trillion dollars annually. Completely insane numbers. But for the moment, DOGE is the great performative political shiny object of the Trump 2.0 Era. Republicans and the part of modern conservatism that blends into right-wing influencer culture is giddy about the possibilities. Democrats are terrified that Musk is essentially taking over the federal government. What everyone agrees — for better or worse — is that it’s a huge, huge deal.
I’m normally not the biggest fan of the Punchbowl newsletter. But this, from yesterday, is actually a good rundown of what DOGE remains, just an advisory thing that will propose things to Trump and the Republican Congress. It’s as powerful as whatever Trump feels he can do by executive action or Congress can do with legislation. For now, every Republican and even a few Democrats want to group around DOGE and get some of the magical fairy dust, kind of a post-reality rave and dance party for bad people. But the appropriators, the people in Congress who decide how money is spent, are mostly saying nice things and “we’ll get back to you, but sounds lovely” and moon-walking away from the conversation…
Starting a few days ago, Musk commented approvingly on a long thread by a longtime Social Security abolitionist, Senator Mike Lee, making the case for abolishing Social Security and replacing it with private accounts. This was followed by a series of remarks by both either saying Social Security is a scam or, alternatively, that you can cut billions or hundreds of billions and no one will notice. Just Wednesday Ramaswamy went on CNBC and in addition to discussing various other ideas about innovation and efficiency, noted that there are “hundreds of billions of dollars of savings to extract just from basic program integrity measures” out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The rest of the quote suggests he thinks he can claw back these savings by cutting off benefits to people who don’t really deserve them or are legally entitled to them…
Just for the record, let me remind you that the actually-elected Sen. Mike Lee (… roy Jenkins!) is really, really dumb. Sincere, yes — but stupid. Also, here’s a chunk from the Punchbowl article Josh cites:
Mega-billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are coming to Capitol Hill today to talk about their much-hyped effort to cut government spending and streamline the federal bureaucracy.
The meeting is at 3 p.m., after the Senate leaves town for the week. (The rhythms of Congress are hard. It takes everyone time to learn.)
President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” — also known as DOGE, named for the memecoin backed by Musk — is best thought of as a mercenary-like effort.
Unlike previous spending-reduction initiatives, DOGE has no statutory authority or fast-track floor process, and Hill leaders have no idea how they’ll handle any of the proposed spending cuts offered by Musk and Ramaswamy.
We’d also note the idea of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse is hardly a novel idea. Just ask Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul!…
Yet there are massive hurdles here for Musk, Ramaswamy and congressional Republicans. Not the least of which is that spending cuts are great until they impact one’s own constituents. Then it gets hard…
Corrupt billionaire immigrant Elon Musk: “Defund the ACLU”
Me: The ACLU doesn’t receive government funding you vile loathsome imbecile.
— Ricky Davila (@therickydavila.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 12:41 AM
Again, unless some can prove that DOGE is not an effort to distract from what the very expert Russ Vought is doing at CBO, I’ll assume this is kayfabe.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 4:21 PM
Because I actually laughed out loud at the Community Note:
— Brooke Harrington (@ebharrington.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 2:52 PM
Maybe credit @smoothdunk2.bsky.social as well, who did the cartoon but has been cropped out here (I don't know if you did the cropping or just found it like this)
— Eddie Robson (@eddierobson.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 3:55 AM
Thank you so much! Yes, I found the image like this, and an earlier commenter recognized the artist's work. Very grateful to the artist, and to you for this contribution.
— Brooke Harrington (@ebharrington.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 4:12 AM
How About a Music Thread for a Saturday Night
Steve LaBonne
The Million Scooter March on Washington should be fun.
Baud
1. Russ Vought isn’t at CBO because Trump isn’t president.
2. Vought is nominated for OMB.
laura
No One! No one elected these shit fucks who are huffing their own farts. Far be it from me to stop them from their proclivities or avocations. However, they are coming for our earned benefits- we worked for and paid into them- and they plan to swap some crypto-bullshit-magic beans-shiny object/Squirrel! Fuck that fucking bullshit. What, exactly do we owe our financial betters?
dm
Didn’t the Social Security cohort vote primarily for Biden? Trump won’t mind, as long as his supporters aren’t affected.
Nelle
Back in the olden days of July, 2023, I lost 15 precious minutes of my life talking with Vivek Ramaswamy at the Iowa State Capitol Building. He was just beginning his run for presidency in the run-up for the Iowa Caucuses. We were taking a break from protesting the Iowa legislature’s ramming through the 6 week ban on abortion. Poor Vivek talked to us because he didn’t know who was important enough to merit his time and who wasn’t. He was the most vapid, convinced of his own worth, empty suit. A construction of eager sound bites and overly bright, politician’s smile. Easily sure that he is the brightest one in any room.
Baud
Sounds like the Syrian rebels are beginning to enjoy a victory dance. Everything can change on a dime.
Shalimar
Private accounts. Brilliant idea. Everyone over 40 would have lost everything in 2008.
Roberto el oso
Well, if the murder of Brian Thompson was intended to be some sort of message to the rich and out-of-touch, Musk & Ramaswamy seem to have missed it.
Jay
@Shalimar:
Isn’t that what a 401K is supposed to be?
Firebert
Some day eventually, all of crypto will implode and become worthless, impoverishing all these stupid fucks. Won’t be a day too soon.
eclare
@Nelle:
Back when I watched Morning Joe, there was a sports journalist there that I liked, Pablo Torre. He went to Harvard with Vivek and said that he was easily the most hated person in every class. One reason, and this stood out to me, when he raised his hand to ask or answer a question, he arranged his fingers in a “V” shape.
Arrogant SOB who thinks that he is oh so clever.
NeenerNeener
@Roberto el oso: Didn’t Ramaswamy float the idea of getting rid of the VA? Doesn’t seem that smart to threaten to kill the health insurance of former Navy Seals, Marines, Army Rangers, snipers, etc.
mrmoshpotato
@eclare: That’s just sad.
WTFGhost
As a loner, who played escapism-RPGs, and used to be able to spin up a fun story for a couple-three friends, I LOLed at the “he doesn’t have two friends to play D&D with”, but, more importantly, you’d need to have hundreds of people, *desperate* to play with you, before they’d let you play with a d20 with 18 repeated twice (i.e., 18, 18, instead of 8 and 18)… much less a d20-all-20s.
Just saying, and tell me I’m wrong – I used to play D&D with the Players Handbook 1st ED and copies of 2, of the 3, expansion rulebooks.
Jeffro
If Ramaswamy and Musk are traveling together often…well, one can only hope…
WTFGhost
@Nelle: The brightest farts are lit on fire.
Just saying, in case you needed to hear it tonight.
Bill Arnold
@NeenerNeener:
Many of whom are now on beta blockers, banned in competitive shooting because they steady hands.
RevRick
@Firebert: The thing about crypto is that it’s a huge energy suck depending on ever more complicated mathematics to “coin” new money that, at present, can’t be used in the real world, like buying groceries. Instead, this “money” exists only on servers and besides illicit transactions, it is only a vehicle for speculation. At least the Dutch had the decency to grow tulips.
RSA
(1) Thanks for posting the attribution for the cartoon. I don’t know why unethical people often strip off the creator’s name, but it’s good when when attention is drawn to it.
(2) I wish our public discourse generally paid more attention to people’s qualifications. Are billionaires qualified to talk about making money? Some of them are. Do they understand the impact on lower-income families and individuals? Few have any experience at all.
Aziz, light!
Superhero name for the CEO shooter: The Adjuster.
(from Bsky)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Yeah, pretty much. Retirement investment accounts like 401ks, IRAs, etc should not be all of one’s investment income/savings. You need something like Social Security for a solid foundation, something that should always be there. Y’know like a safety net.
That said, if you’d been invested in broad-based, index stock and bond mutual funds/ETFs in 2008 and never sold as well as continued contributing to them (if you were still working) then you would’ve eventually been made whole when the economy recovered. Even better, if you were fortunate enough to still have a job and be able to buy shares in those funds, you would’ve bought them up at cheap prices, being made more than whole when the market recovered and rose. Up until the pandemic, there was a rip roaring bull run in stocks that started up a few years after the Great Recession
Melancholy Jaques
@WTFGhost:
Two things I don’t understand no matter how many times smart people try to explain them to me: cryptocurrency and D&D.
RevRick
@Shalimar: The thing about Social Security is that it also provides disability payments and benefits to widowed parents with children under 18. I know firsthand about the latter, because a member of the church dropped dead of a sudden heart attack and left behind his wife and four minor children. It was a lifeline for her.
Ben Cisco
@eclare: Pablo is a gem. Love his work on ESPN and podcast.,
Parfigliano
@Firebert: The reason they want Govt finance entwined with crypto is so when crypto implodes the Govt has no choice but to bail it out.
RevRick
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The fundamental concept of Social Security is that it is social, one generation being supported by the nexts, and it is Security, not subject to market fluctuations.
Parfigliano
@RSA: Fewer care about the impact.
eclare
@RevRick:
Also it’s a lifetime annuity, so you don’t run out of cash at 80.
eemom
@Melancholy Jaques:
Same here re crypto. Never even tried with D&D.
@Aziz, light!:
👏
Bill Arnold
@Aziz, light!:
“The Adjuster” seems to go back to this “skeet”, on bluesky at least (haven’t checked TikTok):
frosty
Funny, I never met him or talked to him or even saw a video of him but I had exactly the same reaction.
eclare
The Liberal Redneck on the Hunter pardon
https://x.com/traecrowder/status/1864413687928508428
Gin & Tonic
@RevRick: The mathematics are not complicated at all. It’s just that the calculations are time-consuming.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
When I was running that 900+ person RPG in Second Life I was shocked to find out there were people in the admin group who were just there because Role Playing games are considered “cool”, but didn’t have any interest in it, but that wouldn’t stop them from lecture the actual role players on how they were doing it all wrong.
I guess Musk buying Hasbro is like this kind of thinking taken to it’s illogical extreme.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
If you played make believe in a sandbox as child you already know how to do both.
Kayla Rudbek
@NeenerNeener: yeah, for all the chatter about thinking about the ancient Roman Empire, at least my ancient Roman ancestors actually knew how to run an empire, unlike these idiots.
moonbat
@Parfigliano: BINGO! They want a too-big-to-fail™ ‘loan’ in real money when they are finished fleecing the rubes.
Kayla Rudbek
@Bill Arnold:
@Aziz, light!:
and there’s already fanfics about him on Archive of Our Own
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: We’ve been talking about how crypto works a few threads back. Might help.
D&D most fundamentally is a framework for collective storytelling set in a world loosely based on Tolkien’s. The Dungeon Master (DM) sets up and describes an environment and the players describe how their characters in that environment will act – toward each other and the things the DM have put in the world. The DM steers the story roughly in a direction they have mapped out, but they don’t really have control – the players push in some directions and the DM pulls in some, and the story each session gets written by everyone involved. The DM handles the story arc, and everyone together fills in the details. One of the bigger streaming DM groups has turned one of their seasons into an anime based on the story they created during their play sessions.
The rules are just details to give structure to the whole thing.
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
Most computation done by or on behalf of humans is for bitcoins.
(It’s done with task-specific hardware 4 to 5 orders of magnitude more efficient that CPUs.) (at least this was the case when I did back-of-the-envelope calculations a few years ago.)
kalakal
@Aziz, light!:
Am I evil because I laughed at that? A lot
Gretchen
@kalakal: I’m afraid I laughed too.
kindness
They wouldn’t let a Democrat mint a $1T coin to solve the deficit problem, but they’ll let Trump put all our Social Security into crypto. Then when crypto goes bust, guess who they’ll blame?
Democrats of course! Welcome to the modern MSM.
Pete Downunder
I have a relative in the D&D world who is literally world famous doing something related on the internet. He has tried on several occasions to explain to me what he and his company do and sadly I’m no wiser than before. In fact most of the young people I know have jobs that did not exist 20 years ago. Yes, I’m old.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: I’m another of the mystified but uninterested, but isn’t part of the energy consumption problem the huge amount of updating that has to be done after any significant transaction?
Kristine
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Pretty much my story. I so wanted to take early retirement in 2008. Then the roof caved in.
I let everything sit where it was, kept adding to it, and was able to leave in 2013. But it wasn’t the only reason. I also had a company pension that pretty much doubled my retirement savings. My company ended that program for new hires this past January.
Those MOTUs. They just love to kick out the supports.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kristine:
I got a letter from the Union Pension fund a few months back, estimating my monthly benefit when I retire and it, currently, like $43/month. That’s it. From what I remember, the formula is $10 for every year worked. Every year counts as a credit. It takes 5 years to vest. I remember calling the Pension fund office asking for information on how the benefits were calculated and the person I talked to acted annoyed that they had to explain it.
It’s not COLA, either, AFAIK. And who knows if it will still exist in like 30 years.
karen marie
Where is that fucking meteor?
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: name of thread that explains crypto?
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
Here you go,
https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/07/a-quarter-of-a-billion-dollars-to-enable-hawk-tuah-memecoin/
NotMax
@Jay
“Crypto goes up, crypto goes down. No one can explain it.”
//
Jay
@NotMax:
“Crypto disappears, nobody knows where it goes”//
NotMax
@Jay
‘Round and ’round. Cue up Tommy Dorsey and his Clambake Seven.
:)
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: Mille grazie.
and you’re welcome for the compliment/ acknowledgment I gave you last night. I meant it. Was Not being silly in that moment.
you answer my questions as if I were welcome here.
some people Wish I would Google. I can and sometimes do. Being told to do so feels like a tiny threat to revoke my green card; dims my light when I contract like an amoeba. ( I know you know about this skirmish. )
asking a question, and getting an answer, and feeling welcomed, it lights my candle.
Winter is a good time to be on the receiving end of warmth, and light.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: wow, that will take some brain power to study it. I shall.
God I hope they don’t f up my ssi, I’m waiting til I’m 70, and it still won’t be enough. I’m tired and scared, and fighting many battles.
JML
@Martin: not bad, but I’d probably pull out the Tolkien reference; originally D&D was as much influenced by Burroughs, Lieber, Vance, Moorcock, and Lovecraft as Tolkien and the modern game has even more diverse influences. But I guess using JRRT is shorthand for “anything with elves, dwarves, and orcs”?
I’ve been playing for over 40 years now. Lot of great times and great friends through RPGs.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
I have what T calls “google fu”.
T’is the season for people to be cranky and short, given the election.
I just let it wash off my back like a Canada Goose in a snowstorm when the lake is still not yet frozen.
A thick skin and general forgiveness works here.
If not, there is always pie.
Martin
@JML: I figure everyone knows Tolkien, so close enough.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: thanks. More that I’m grateful for the warmth.
asking a question and a person answers it, is like my cat self getting a treat.
I’m almost over my bitchiness about it. For real, so much crankiness around here , of late.
water off a duck’s back.
speaking of the goose, or the duck, and the not quite frozen lake, have you ever heard the sound when a duck walks across very thin ice, and it makes bendy sheering sounds, and sometimes the duck falls through the thin ice?
only once , for me, but it was enthralling. What a sound.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
I am Canadian, I have done that, been there, didn’t need a duck or goose to do it for me.
I have used my belly boat as an icebreaker.
(Ice forms first along the shoreline, while the center of the lake or river stays open and fishable).
It’s a time of year where we all need warmth.
; )
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: Wowie, you get to hear this sound a lot, which was a rare event for me in Denver? I thought it was the coolest thing.
(must be how my Uruguay friend felt to see snow for the first time ever, because I sent her to Denver, and my parents took her to the top of
mt evansmt Blue Sky, in July.It took a lot to convince my friend that she’d need a coat and long pants in July. But up at 14,000 feet, you sure do.)
you go out on a belly boat, to fish in winter? That, I will google.
Indeed warmth in winter, and lights in the darkness.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
I fish, flyfish.
Cold, dreary grey days, drive one outside into the woods, the rivers, the sea.
On the coast, we have summer Steelhead, winter Steelhead, Salmon almost year long, in places.
One of my favorite things is to go into the canyons of the Chehalis and stalk “ghost coho”, July/August.
Day starts at 3am with a drive to the East Chehalis FSR and a bit of 4×4 in the dark. Then a 2 hour hike down into the benchlands and across, a 1 hour rappel down the cliff face into the canyon, then a day of casting shooting heads into deep canyon pools.
In my life, I have caught 3, and released them.
On a great year, 100 come in, on a bad year, 15, scattered across 24 km of canyon pools.
There used to be thousands, commercial fishing killed them off.
I am a little bit nutsy about fishing, and not just the stories I get to tell.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: wow.
magical fabulous story. I notice your story didn’t include the cliff climb up, and the 2+ hours hike up after that, and then the 4×4 drive back, probably in the dark. 24 km of canyons, do you ever stay a night or two, fish in different pools?
I had a client who loved to fish, catch and release. It sounded like he almost called the fish to him, a fish whisperer. Perhaps it’s similar for you.
if you ever get to keep your salmon, you must be amazing at preparing it a zillion ways.
I don’t know if you’re nuts or not, or if there are stories you’re saying you can’t tell, but I love your stories. Take me to nature anytime. My soul is fed.
And the lurkers, swimming under the surface of the waters here, you’ve probably hooked them, too.
did you see Ramalama’s nature writing last night, walking home in the snow in Quebec ? On the happy little things thread?
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
Yup, saw it.
With the ex, I had Sugar. Rottie, Shepard, Lab X. 80lbs.
My fishing buddy. She would sleep on my lap in the belly boat, only wake up when I had a fish on.
When I would lay out my gear in the hallway, the night before going fishing, she would sleep on it to make sure I took her with me. Only dog I ever had that never rolled in dead salmon.
So, one day, Feb, old Indigenous trail down to a pool where they used to dip net. Fished the pool, nada. The bottom of the pool was deep wade able, strong current, but after a 15 foot waterfall, lead to another canyon pool.
The ex had a bad habit of loosening Sugar’s collar to the useless part.
So, wading across, Sugar on my downsteam side, lessening the current on her, hand on her collar, guess what, nothing but collar.
Threw my rod and her collar onto the other bank, plunged in and went swimming after Sugar over the waterfall.
Caught up to her about halfway down the canyon pool, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, hauled her over to the west side to the canyon. One hand grabbed handholds and hauled us back up to the waterfall against the current. Put her over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry, climbed up the waterfall and back onto the bank.
Stripped naked, wrung out my fleece, hung my waders to drain, built a big fire. Once my stuff was only damp, put it back on, made her stay, waded back across the river to get my rod and her collar.
Hiked out, which helped with keeping warm, had towels in the truck for Sugar, wore my neoprene waders all the way home with the heat cranked on high and the windows cracked, (moisture),
Got home at 4pm (rather than 10pm, and the ex asked “did you get your limit?”
Messy, but great,
1/4 cup soy sauce,
2 tablespoons of Montreal Steak Spice,
1/4 cup dark brown sugar.
2 teaspoons of liquid smoke,
Marinate 2 hours minimum in the fridge.
Air dry for half an hour to create a “skin”,
BBQ/pan fry or hot smoke skin side down.
Geminid
In the “Big if True” category, from Middle East Eye reporter Ragip Soylu:
eclare
@Geminid:
Whoa!
TBone
They will find a way to sluice the SS money to “the private sector” when they “cut.” Just like they did when health “care” (it is not healthcare, it is an insurance money scam) was “fixed.” The government is paying the private sector to insure us and all they do is use the government to make profit on death and illness.
This judge and this plaintiff have the receipts:
https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/judge-criticizes-unitedhealthcare-refusing-treatment-cancer-patients
He recused. An act of Resistance that set a tiny example of how our justice system is SUPPOSED to work.
Nina
They’ll not go for Social Security directly, but I think it’s likely they’ll play games with the annual COLA by forcing the Bureau of Labor Statistics to lie about the September Consumer Price Index, which is what the COLA is based on. I’m betting that they’ve already set their sights on getting someone who is willing to lie at BLS, because they think that if they only put out happy numbers then people will trust them and everyone will be happy.
TBone
@Shalimar: my aunt had lymphoma (a miracle that she survived it and just celebrated her 80th birthday) in 2007/2008 and was forced to stay at her job and work while she was so sick, because she lost her nest egg investments.
I don’t know, to this day, how she did it. Her husband, formerly the happiest person in my entire family, committed suicide.
TBone
@TBone: two other judges have also recused
eclare
@TBone:
Oh that is awful.
TBone
@RevRick: and these f***s are re-commissuoning the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to be dedicated SOLELY for power to run crypto and AI computers.
TBone
@eclare: my burning, ceaseless rage at insurance companies, brokers, and the financial sector will never dim. He was my beloved favorite uncle. He taught the deaf at
https://gallaudet.edu/deaf-studies/
Rode his bicycle to work each day, kept honey bees, taught me magic and juggling and sign language and so much more.
I will never not be
angryenraged.eclare
@TBone:
I get that, totally understandable. Your uncle sounds like a wonderful person.
Jay
@TBone:
Seconded.
TBone
@eclare:
@Jay:
thank you for allowing me to vent that so I don’t get cancer from my sometimes overwhelming rage. My own travails with health insurance pale in comparison but this rage is always underlying…I won’t assassinate anyone over it but I had a really good laugh at The Adjuster moniker.
Thank you.
WereBear
@Nelle: And yet he conned a bunch of “brilliant” billionaires.
Which shows how crappy our current crop is. Like cells grown in a lab, and never subjected to the world outside The Dome, ala Stephen King.
As the extent of how the healthcare CEO scammed UnitedHealth’s own investors, keeping the DOJ investigation to himself and his lawyers while they shorted the stock, which dropped like a rock when the news was made public.
But they could afford someone professional. They wouldn’t stand for carving stuff on the cartridges that could jam the gun. I’m just pointing out the pool of suspects has gone global in such a case.
We’re finding out how none of these people seem that tightly wrapped. We truly don’t know what they have been up to that they don’t want us to know. Or the lengths they would go to, like overthrow a country, to keep doing it.
I think unbelievable things will be happening far more often.
Baud
@Nina:
They are correct.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Thanks, Obama
Baud
@Geminid:
TBone
@Parfigliano: 🎯
TBone
@Jay: I used to feel the same way about fishing and thank you for giving me the living vicariously thru your adventures.
Geminid
Ragip Soylu had plenty more to post this morning. One item:
Soylu’s post showed a picture of an elderly man with a steady gaze.
Another post showed a stream of men jogging down a dawn-lit street. One of them turns to an onlooker with his hands out and asks a question. When she answers he starts laughing and jogs on.
Ed. I’ve seen reports of inmates released from other prisons who did not know that Hafez Assad, Bashar’s father, was dead. Some asked their liberators if they were Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.
This reminds of the story of Rip van Winkle, except these men were not sleeping.
YY_Sima Qian
Actually gutting the federal government via unilateral executive action may be the “stretch” goal for “DOGE”, creating chaos & drive all the technocrats & civil service employees who might resist Trump’s policies by interfering w/ their implement may be the actual short to medium term intent, to soften up the target (being the federal government) for gutting later.
Geminid
@Geminid: A couple more items from Ragip Soylu:
Latakia is the larger of Syria’s two ports, the smaller being Tartous to the north. This coastal area and the mountains inland are the homeland of Assad’s fellow Alawites, a minority religious community that furnished much of his military and political leadership.
Also:
Hmeimin is inland from Latakia, and one of Russia’s two major bases in Syria. The other is a large section of the port of Tartous that they have leased since 1982. It’s their only naval base in the Mediterranean, and the rebels will likely cancel that lease.
Turkiye has exercised its rights under the Treaty of Montreux* to bar belligerent war ships from passing the Turkish Straits during wartime, so Russia’s Mediterranean fleet will have to sail out the Straits of Gibraltar and presumably head to Russia’s Baltic ports. I wonder how many people will moon them as they sail by.
* A couple years after the Second World War, the Soviets “requested” a conference that would renegotiate the Treaty of Montreux signed in 1932. The Turks saw the proposal as a real threat; they have good reason to regard the Treaty as a cornerstone of their sovereignity. This is one the main reasons they joined the NATO alliance in 1952.
jimmiraybob
We the Peasants, in order to form a more perfect union for our betters ………..
It certainly seems to me that the Co-Presidentin’ Team’s “DOGE” stands for Department of Government Elimination. Anybody else notice that?
Maybe they can at least manage to give us as many potatoes as we need as compensation. It would be great for the potato farmers.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: incredible dog rescue. Yikes
artem1s
Morans. YOU CANNOT CUT COST IF YOU ARE ALSO CUTTING REVENUE.
Where do they think the money for social security comes from? Employees are contributing roughly $1.2 trillion annually in payroll taxes to SS.
The ONLY way you get anyone to agree to forego their social security is if you stop taxing them and letting businesses forgo their matching taxes. Anyone who remembers when W tried to replace SS with ‘private’ retirement accounts knows that the plan was never to give ‘tax’ relief. It will be a forced contribution to a retirement account (that fatcat CEO’s will skim huge management fees off the top of) that won’t be FDIC protected or under the employees’ control. Given who these sooper genius assholes are you can bet there will be a crypto requirement. And we can assume the same ‘smartest guys in the room’ who crashed Enron will be in charge of the accounts.
Also when the retirement homes throw Meemaw and Papaw out onto the street and have to shutter all their facilities and fire all their workers (and CEO’s) and declare bankruptcy, that going to hurt plenty of MAGAt voters. How much of our economy is dependent on social security earners to keep spending those dollars? Something like 81 million people are on some kind of social security. Everything sector of the economy will be affected. Do these assholes think there will be no downside to yanking those dollars out of the economy?
WTFGhost
@Jay: Probably a dead thread, but:
a 401(k) is a “cash or deferred plan”. You say “rather than pay me in cash, make a pension contribution.” It’s considered an *employer* provided benefit – just, one you could refuse.
Social Security was founded with the idea that you’d also have “savings”, like, you saved up the way George Bailey complained about in It’s A Wonderful Life, until you had a down payment for a house, then, continued to save.
Then, you’d have a pension – so, with a 401(k), people are only really “saving” half of what the planners expected, unless they have more liquid cash assets growing as well.
Then, with social security, you’re happy; and, without the other “two legs” of the three legged stool (social security being just one), at least old age insurance kept you from being *destitute*.
Lobo
@Melancholy Jaques: One is a game few understand where you can lose everything in a blip. DND is a social game you can enjoy with others.
WTFGhost
@Lobo: Escape rooms, and “murder mystery” parties are also D&D analogues.
(I did geek out on early D&D apocrypha to establish my bona fides that you’d need friends who loved the F out of you to let you play with a die that isn’t even loaded *too badly*.)
Ruckus
I am a veteran who uses the VA for my healthcare.
I, and I imagine a lot of others would be somewhat pissed off if the VA was taken away. (That is a massive understatement BTW) We earned the VA by serving our country at a hell of a lot lower pay than minimum wage. It works, it is a benefit that millions of vets have earned, on both sides of the political spectrum. It’s not perfect, but then again nothing is. What it is, is damn good healthcare that every person using it earned. We pay/paid into it like everyone else and we earned the right to this healthcare by serving our country. I volunteered, served during a war, like many others. I went where I was told and did my work well. I EARNED use of the VA for my healthcare, and other benefits, as did a hell of a lot of others, men and women who served their country. And these pompous, arrogant assholes want to remove this? I wonder if they have any concept of how many citizens will be pissed off beyond belief at their pompous, arrogant concept that people who served their country often under dangerous, quite possibly life changing or ending danger, all the while they make damn high salaries supposedly serving us, a not insignificant number of the entire population.
Do they have any concept whatsofuckingever that they work for ALL OF THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, not the other way around?
Ruckus
@artem1s:
I’m an old. I started working when I was 12, a paper route. I enlisted during a war. I worked, dealt with smart people and pompous arrogant assholes, for pay that wouldn’t even pay the rent on a modest apartment, ate often crappy meals, went where I was sent, ran a department on a US navy vessel, I EARNED the use of the VA, it was part of the contract of service. The healthcare is good, many of the vets have nothing else in the way of healthcare. As an old, retired person I’m one of them. I and millions of others earned this. Not all of those that earned the use of the VA actually do, but the numbers that do are not insignificant. And the VA provides other services than only healthcare. WE EARNED THIS. Take it away and watch how well that will go over with a hell of a lot of citizens
I also paid into Social Security for six decades – I also EARNED my Social Security benefits.
Mobile
I also receive my health care from the VA earned from my two tours in RVN. it bothers me to no end that most of the guys I speak with at the VA are MAGA. If we should lose this benefit, for these individuals I will feel only a strong sense of schadenfreude.