“We need you, because it is a war”
The Republican Party declares war on Americans.
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Epic corruption encroachment continues … Senators are going step by step to grab their own total-immunity bill. Just like DJT!
This we care very much about. The state of our nation, on the other hand, we don’t give a crap.
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The “picture of courage” for Veteran’s Day
(((SIGH)))
TPM, ya coulda done a lot better than that n00b.
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Today’s Heather & Paul:
Having had a day to digest it all, I’m now persuaded that this will shake out better for us than for the republicans. The republicans were never going to agree to the ACA subsidies, and even if they did TSF would veto it. The reopening of the government under any circumstances would never be accompanied by a reinstatement of the subsidies.
There are a couple of good things under the deal - SNAP resumed for a year and at higher funding levels; rehiring and full back pay for all federal workers fired during the shutdown. Litigation in the lower courts may have resulted in similar outcomes, but would have been long and drawn out and ultimately delayed and vitiated, if not fully undone by SCOTUS. Now, these elements will be part of the deal. If TSF or the GOP reneges on them, it just hands us more trump (sic) cards for the midterms.
Will these elements remain a part of the reopening deal? Yes, because TSF will so order it and the House will cave. Why? Because if TSF or the House now reject this deal after bragging about how the Democrats have caved, they know their ownership share of the shutdown will go from 55/45 to 70/30.
I don’t know what happens in January when a new CR is needed and don’t much care in light of other things that very likely will happen. An ACA subsidy vote in December will result in the Republicans completely owning vastly higher health insurance premiums across-the-board. Fifteen million will lose Medicaid. The economy will further sour in the first half of 2026 and even if the AI bubble doesn’t burst before the midterms, we’re likely to have stagflation from the clusterfuck of deportation madness and tariff lunacy. The Fed can’t fight stagflation. It can fight inflation or recession, abiding the stinking turd of the one it abandons fighting. Microcosm of the economic travail- Italy’s Pasta trade group anticipates cessation of exporting pasta to the US in January because of an effective 107% tariff on Italian pasta. That’s a lot of very pissed off meatballs.
In short, all the components of an angry midterm electorate remain in place to generate a 2026 Blue Wave. Yes we should primary some of the old guard, but with the sad but grateful resignation that we’re only doing it as a natural, generational evolution. No anger or rancor for the team members being asked to make way for a younger, more vigorous future. All the anger must be concentrated and laser focussed on GOP officeholders, from President to dog catcher, as the authors of our economic and civic miseries.
On the timing, I still wish the Dems hung tough through Thanksgiving. But the fundamentals have not been changed because of a couple of weeks, unless we change them with internecine foolishness.
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I’m also reading that a judge in Utah is poised to give Dems a new House seat thanks to redistricting there. Poor Mikey.
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Jack Smith did not subpoena those phone records. That happened long before he was appointed.
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I’m taking my handsome 80-yr-old vet out for escargot and a martini today.
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Lawrence O’Donnell had a great show last night about what Senate democrats did and he put it in whole new light. I don’t think the deal is as bad as we first thought. If you get a chance you need to watch it.
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Does this open the door to others who are not Senators to sue the government for malicious investigation and prosecution? Like Comey or James?
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I think Thune had to throw this in to keep his own troops on board.
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People are inherently STUPID!
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Damn, I’d never do that, and I’m not even trying to hide anything.
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So, should be an easy case(s) to defend?
(Not a lawyer, do not play one on Tee Vee)
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Not to mention that eight of those states and DC are 100% vote by mail.
Not to mention that Trump administrations have been working hard to cripple the US Postal Service, making delivery less and less reliable for mail-in ballots. Voters control when they vote; they do not control whether and when ballots are received.
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I’ll go with purgatory, for now. And it’s only year 1.
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Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has some good numbers comparing Trump’s priority – send everybody a check so they’ll love me love me love me and vote for those who’ll totally do what I want!!! — and various of the sucker-loser programs he’s cancelled or would like to cancel because the country 'can’t afford them!" Obviously, we all know this. But I like seeing the numbers an economist has assembled. ’
From Alternet (here) ==
https://www.alternet.org/2000-stimulus-check-trump/?u=ebd522ac4aeb0cb8e6f5e2f57572e236832529182ef207d4d7c900c69b4ded96&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nov.11.2025_12.45pm
'The latest example is the $2,000 tariff dividend check that Trump is promising us…We have roughly 340 million people in the country. Let’s say 10 percent don’t get the check because they meet Trump’s category of “high-income.” That leaves over 300 million people getting Trump’s $2,000 checks. That comes to more than $600 billion. Trump’s tariffs are raising around $270 billion. That means we will be paying out $330 billion more in Trump tariff dividend checks than he is raising in tariff revenue. That would add $270 billion to the deficit—this coming from the same guy who is making an obsession of paying down our national debt…
'…we were already looking at a budget deficit for 2026 of $1.8 trillion. If we add $330 billion, the deficit for the fiscal year will be $2.1 trillion. To put this in simple language that even a reporter for a major national news outlet can understand, Trump is proposing to add $2.1 trillion to the debt in 2026; he is not paying it down. I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk and am not terrified by a deficit of this size, which is roughly 7 percent of GDP. But I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder…
…'if Trump were to give this tariff dividend check every year over the next decade, it would add close to $4 trillion to the debt (counting interest payments), almost as much as the big tax cut Congress approved earlier this year.
'… The government shutdown was in large part over the $35 billion in annual payments for enhanced subsidies for people buying insurance in Obamacare exchanges. Trump and Republicans in Congress claimed that we didn’t have the money to pay for these subsidies. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 17 times as much as the enhanced insurance subsidies.///
'To make another comparison, Trump saved us around $6 billion a year by shutting down PEPFAR, the program that has saved tens of millions of lives by treating people in Africa for AIDS…Trump’s tariff dividend checks will cost us 100 times as much as the AIDS program that he said we couldn’t afford.…
',the annual appropriation for public broadcasting was $550 million. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 1,000 times as much as the government’s payments for public broadcasting.
'… it really would be good if media outlets could make knowledge of third grade arithmetic a job requirement for reporters who deal with budget issues. It should be their job to provide meaningful information to the public on the topic. Letting someone talk about $2,000 dividend checks, and also about paying down the debt, is a sick joke.
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