If there’s nothing to buy money won’t matter
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Both prisms and lenses alter the pathway of light as it passes through them. Prisms have flat surfaces, lenses have curved surfaces. Prisms create refraction , hence “rainbow” effect, lenses focus. Causing refractions is a flaw in lenses, especially at the edges (Chromatic Aberration) and when stopped down, diffraction leads to loss of resolution.
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Even less attention was paid to a clever move by SA President Ramaphosa to bring along prominent white South Africans. Trump bullied and talked over the President, but listened respectfully to the richest (white) man in SA who explained at length (three and a half minutes) there is in fact no genocide. Apologies for the X link… it’s the one I have.
https://x.com/i/status/1925263600962158649
In a separate incident, a reporter asked Trump to stop talking over Ramaphosa and let him speak.
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I’m not entirely pessimistic about their going after Social Security (although nothing jerky will ever surprise me, I admit.)
But here’s what I’m wondering – They went after Medicaid here … and they did that because for years, Medicaid was the thing was safe for them to cut because it served a very out-of-sight-out-of-mind population, people too sick and too poor to take much political action on their own behalf and who others voters generally just didn’t care about.
In recent years, though, for various reason, both demographic and legislative, Medicaid has grown a lot, it’s picked up new population, its older uses have begun to touch a more middle-American group of enrollees…
So it’s become somewhat likely that these Medicaid cuts, as they gradually unroll and show themselves to the public over the few years, may – may – trigger some of the same kind of outrage there was over threats to cut Medicare and Social Security …I think it’s ffairly likely – not inevitable, of course – that they’re going to get considerably more blowback on this set of Medicaid cuts than they expect … This is a different era for Medicaid than previous eras were, and these Medicaid cuts may bring more Republican voter attention than any Medicaid cuts could possibly have done in the past.
So if – and I’m only saying if – that happens, then I think it might scare them off going after Social Security…if they don’t get much regular-Republican-voter blowback from this, then, yeah, this bill will embolden them to go after the other programs…But if they do get more of that blowback than they expect, I think it’ll scare them off the big programs for a while …
Of couse we’re also due for the “Social Security is running out of money” alarm soon, just a few years, so I guess all my happy talk here may be wiped out by the fact that there are seem to be more oligarchs in charge and with more fervor to make us not touch their money than in the past, so if the oligarchs’ strength keeps increasing, then everything I’m saying here may be moot as “NO Taxes on the Rich…EVER!” becomes the new national anthem or something.
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As they say in economics, in the long run we are all dead.
Corollary: But that time point to becoming dead can be shortened a fair bit for many with terrible economic policies.
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There is a lot of language out there being used to soften what is happening. Christian is one. Deportation is another - it’s kidnapping, plain and simple.
The news people have a very limited vocabulary and they’ve been told what words are permitted and which ones are not.
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Trump’s Ramaphosa distraction, maybe to coax Elon and Peter to keep giving him money, seems to have failed. The South African leader is a seasoned businessman and he knows a corrupt politician when he sees one. In any case, it took the heat off the House at the birth of one of the most grotesque pieces of legislation in US history. The markets aren’t going to be fooled by this nonsense over the longer term, which points to some pretty ugly times ahead. Even CNN wasn’t fooled.
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Stop Making Sense.
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Small biz jet crashes into military housing in San Diego. At 3:45 in the morning.
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They can’t get blowback if nothing happens for a year or more. And then, the minions will forget what just happened last night because they have the attention spans of a gnat. The Dems may try to run on this, but the GQP will have its machine out there to contest every point the Dems make, no matter the level of truth in the Dem accusations.
There can’t be blowback on something that hasn’t happened yet and, by the time it does happen, the real origin of the issue will be smothered and somehow blamed on Biden.
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“Somebody, a little while ago, in Washington (DC) said, ‘The problem with America,’ the problem with you [gesturing to the audience], ‘is that you have empathy.’”
— Henry Winkler, last night on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
I note this only because it perfectly distills the operating philosophy of the Rethugliklan vermin currently strangling America.
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Btw, I don’t buy that Garbarino accidentally slept through the vote. His Long Island district is pretty solidly Republican but not (for the most part) crazy Republican. At least that’s my impression. I bet he didn’t want to go on record as supporting this bill.
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Speaking of despots……
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Probably because, while a lens enlarges something so you can more easily see its external details, a prism breaks light (which appears to be “white”), up into its real constituent parts, which are light waves (also particles, but we won’t open that worm can) that are all the colors of the rainbow –
So since analysis generally means examining the internal structure and works and parts of something rather than just how it appears on the surface, then a prism is the better metaphor for analysis.
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I don’t know how Long Island would typically respond to a coward, but he may find himself primaried by someone who can stay up past his bedtime to vote on the most consequential bill of the House session so far.
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and they aren’t standing up to him anytime soon…
“The president has a lot of power.” — Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), quoted by NOTUS, explaining why he ultimately voted for a budget bill he didn’t like.
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