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Tuco

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Everything posted by Tuco

  1. Keep in mind, Trump is so pathologically narcissistic that he will mark up a hurricane map rather than admit that he was wrong. He's never going to concede anything that makes him look bad.
  2. I would have liked to see another week, but just so Trump could continue to try to cut off SNAP benefits at the detriment of many Republican and non-voters. All philosophical arguments for or against the filibuster aside, I would really rather have Trump not have a filibusterless Senate for the next 3+ years. The short term sucks right now and that would make it worse. I have no idea what is going to happen in 2028, but I want the Senate Republicans to have an excuse for not passing whatever crazy shit Trump reads on Twitter. Granted, in order for it to matter, Democrats need to use it, which will piss off Trump, and thus endangers it. So it's a game of chicken.
  3. I think you vastly underestimate how much the Republicans hate the ACA. They would have eliminated the filibuster well before funding the ACA.
  4. Compromising definitely cost the Democrats support and opened up their left flank.
  5. Yes. I think the Dems would have done roughly the same in the non-Federal elections during a Federal shutdown. I think the results demonstrate an intensifying trend: Democrats now do better in off-cycle elections. Trump is able to bring out the voters when he is on the ballots, but much of MAGA doesn't care about anything but Trump.
  6. And the next CR, in January, will be the first month they are actually paying for the premiums.
  7. And Trump is still trying to starve families. It also gives Democrats a path to fight again in three months, when SNAP isn't in jeopardy.
  8. I'm not overly pissed off over this. What does irritate me is the timing. The Trump administration was in the middle of deciding not to feed poor American families. That wasn't some inevitable outcome of the shutdown, it was a choice he was fighting at the highest level for. If the Democrats can't message that, then I just don't fucking know what they can win on. Did anyone see any Republican Senator asked about that: "The government currently has the funds and the legal obligation to feed American families below the poverty level: do you agree with the President's decision to not feed them as a way of pressuring the Democrats?" Give it another week for that play out. But, while this is a fight that the Democrats needed to fight, it was obvious the Republicans were not going to give up the ACA firebombing. So what did the Dems get? To me, the big thing was a short timetable until the next fight. Come January 30th, we come to another decision point. But during that fight, SNAP will be fully funded. And while I think Democrats win on Trump defunding SNAP, I also get that Democrats don't want poor kids going hungry. The biggest problem with the Democrats here is that they would rather govern than battle. They need to get ready to battle, because it's either fight or capitulate.
  9. Removing the subsidies is already law. Having a majority in Congress wouldn't be enough to override a veto. (But it would be enough to force the vote and the veto.)
  10. That would probably explain the slow play on the charges or even releasing his name.
  11. Literally in "Whitestown." Looks like a suburb of Indiana, that is going from cornfields to cookie-cutter housing development. The ABC story has a little more detail, including that it was shortly before 7 AM.
  12. One of their childhood memories will be avoiding an oppressive government. That sucks.
  13. The other fun thing is that anyone dealing with elder care issues is basically fucked. My mom is in memory care and we are trying to get the everything set up for when she runs out of savings.. That means working with the SSA and Medicare, but everything is on hold, except the hemorrhaging of the retirement funds. I've got a few months before shit gets critical, but it has to be hitting some folks at exactly the wrong time.
  14. Finished up my travel this week with no problems. SeaTac TSA line on Tuesday was quicker than usual. I'm guessing they overscheduled staff and didn't have that many cancellations. Did overhear a couple of them talking and one of them said something like, "I'm just tired. And I'm tired of handing out IOUs." Came back yesterday, just beating out the clusterfuck escalation. I was re-reading Grapes of Wrath on the plane. I had halfway forgotten how poetic Steinbeck can be. So much stuff from 84 years ago still hits hard today. One of the sections talked about how Americans had pushed into Mexican California, and took over because they were hungrier. But then as generations passed, they got fatter and lazier. Now they feared and hated the Okies pushing in, because they were hungrier. I'm sure that's an oversimplification of American history. But, "American" exceptionalism at its best (and worst) was always migrant exceptionalism. The willingness to risk everything to not stagnate or watch your kids starve.
  15. Perhaps a century from now there will be holiday to celebrate our freedom with subway sandwiches, extra mustard and onions.
  16. And the airlines aren’t just going to lose just 10% of their flights. Who the fuck is going to choose to fly if there is an increasingly likelihood your flights are going to get fucked? Who wants to get stuck an extra night in Des Moines? Anyone who doesn’t have to fly won’t fly. They’re going to start seeing their bookings fall sharply tomorrow.
  17. Victory bump. Good job Georgia.
  18. "Relatively" is doing a lot of lifting there; Cuomo's numbers look like shit. The only crosstabs he leads in are 55-65, 66+, and living in subsidized housing. That's it. Cuomo is +1 on responders over 55-65 and +3 on the over 65 crowd. I am willing to bet age strongly tracks with native-New Yorker and those born in the US. In other words, if you normalize for age, I'm guessing the correlation would for birthplace would look weaker. The same might be true for subsidized housing - 47% of the households in subsidized housing in Bronx County are 62 or older. That goes up to 68% for 51 or older. That wouldn't cover all the difference, but it likely makes up a lot of it. The biggest thing this tweet is telling me is that some folks are squinting really hard to find something bad for Mamdani in those numbers. And that older Democrats are more conservative - shocking.
  19. It's possible Platner is doing shit that doesn't sit right with this guy. It's also possible that Platner has enough baggage that Wertheimer is worried that it might limit his career. I'm not much for blaming the "Party", as I think it is overly simplistic to imagine the Democratic Party as a bunch of fat cats drinking cognac, smoking cigars, and deciding which candidate they will put up for what slots. But, it's worth noting that until maybe 2019, it was the policy to blackball any vendor who worked for a candidate trying to primary an incumbent Democrat. Putting financial pressures on the people that can support candidates is a way to put your thumb on the scale. If multiple staffers have bailed, it's possible that the word is out that this campaign will not look good on your resume for future campaigns, or for appointments might Dems control in the future. Or it could be that Platner is regularly doing stupid shit that is causing those around him to bail. Either is plausible.
  20. I'm flying SeaTac to a small city in Texas, connecting DEN on the way there and DFW on the way back. I'm bringing lots of snacks, a bottle to fill with water, dressing in layers, etc.. Calling it an adventure. (And I've told my wife that I plan on working until I'm 78, in case that comes up in a damages calculation...worst case scenario.)
  21. One of the interesting dynamics I noticed on Facebook is that about half the Trump apologists are blaming Dems for SNAP being shutdown, but the other half are just attacking the people who need it. The same recycled cruel shit like “get a job” and “don’t feed the animals.” I like this. This is a wedge issue in the MAGA universe. Fucking Senate Dems should not cave. Poor people need to understand that a good chunk of Republicans believe they should starve.
  22. It would be pretty funny for them to ram this through only for Trump to get beat by Obama.
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