What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Dump Term 2, 1.01: Sleep Now in the Fire

Retired teacher Sheryl in Iowa- I like you!

Alan Grofield (@alangrofield.bsky.social)

Me, a communist: “Schumer needs to whip his caucus harder into opposing the secretary of labor nominee! 17 yes votes is unacceptable.” Sheryl, retired Iowa schoolteacher who caucused for Klobuchar: “so what if he carries his kid around, a 4 year old isn’t stopping a bullet”
bsky.app bsky.app
 
Convince me that the Republicans don't win either way? If the government shuts down the stupid American people will believe that the Democrats caused it cause the Republicans know how to message and the Democrats don't.

And, if it passes the Republicans will have given even more power to Donald Trump which is exactly what the Republicans want.

And don't tell me it's about the midterms. They won't matter, and the next election won't matter cause there will not be one.
 
“Voters who ignored the facts about the economy and used them as an excuse to vote for Trump weren’t people who wanted a change. They were people who, actually, didn’t want any change at all. They didn't like new policies advanced by the Biden-Harris administration, a more inclusive vision of America where traditionally marginalized people had equal opportunity. They didn’t want a new generation of leadership. They wanted the “old stability,” the patriarchy that has run the country for generations. In many ways, that's what’s at the heart of the conservative coalition. It's not a rejection of the established order; it's an embrace of it.” - Joyce Vance
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Convince me that the Republicans don't win either way? If the government shuts down the stupid American people will believe that the Democrats caused it cause the Republicans know how to message and the Democrats don't.

And, if it passes the Republicans will have given even more power to Donald Trump which is exactly what the Republicans want.

And don't tell me it's about the midterms. They won't matter, and the next election won't matter cause there will not be one.
Click to expand...
Jesus...its not about "winning" it is about actually fighting. In the end the GOP is going to get the vast majority of what they want but if Dems want this country to survive they need to get the people on their side and right now they just aren't. You put up a fight, and force some concessions on say DOGE and Musk and people get motivated.

Normally I would say a shutdown is stupid because the Dems will be blamed when push comes to shove but the average American has the attention span of a horsefly, no one will remember the shutdown a month after it ends because Trump will have done 12 stupid things a day after it because he is so angry. Every decision he makes is unpopular and his numbers on the economy are tanking as fast as his economy is. The GOP is so afraid of the reactions they dont even show up at safe town halls anymore.
 
Yeah, that's great. But, it's been over 15 years of caving to Republicans over and over again because the Democrats are actually interested in Governing and the Republicans are only interested in Power.

It's a no win situation.

I appreciate the fight that AOC, and Bernie, and Warren have had over the years but quite frankly it has failed. I mean, cripes, we thought we had them with the Abortion issue and a majority of white women said, naaah, we don't need any rights there anymore.

If fighting means shutting down the government that's fine, that's great. But it will just lead to winning the midterms and doing "governing" with Republicans again. The pendulum has basically been swinging from the middle to the right and it never enters the left side of the spectrum.
 
Gotta start somewhere, Scooby.

Brett Guthrie is visiting my FQHC tomorrow. He’s the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid. My provider is off today (no patients in the office), so I’ve spent the first 2 hours of my day getting specific numbers ready in case he comes into my area, because you better be damn sure I’m going to talk to him about cutting Medicaid.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Yeah, that's great. But, it's been over 15 years of caving to Republicans over and over again because the Democrats are actually interested in Governing and the Republicans are only interested in Power.

It's a no win situation.

I appreciate the fight that AOC, and Bernie, and Warren have had over the years but quite frankly it has failed. I mean, cripes, we thought we had them with the Abortion issue and a majority of white women said, naaah, we don't need any rights there anymore.

If fighting means shutting down the government that's fine, that's great. But it will just lead to winning the midterms and doing "governing" with Republicans again. The pendulum has basically been swinging from the middle to the right and it never enters the left side of the spectrum.
Click to expand...
You keep fighting, and you keep fighting hard enough and for the right things, pretty soon you have enough of a majority you don't need the Republicans to govern.

Let Donnie keep vetoing bills to help with home healthcare for the elderly, expanding children's tax credits, school lunches, etc, and see what that does for him.

Obama's big mistake was not passing universal healthcare while Dems had 60 senators. Instead, he tried to play the 'bipartisan' game and kept negotiating with Olympia Snowe to get her support, and kept watering things down until we got the half-assed Obamacare, which they've been doing everything they can to kill it ever since.
 
psych said:
Gotta start somewhere, Scooby.

Brett Guthrie is visiting my FQHC tomorrow. He’s the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid. My provider is off today (no patients in the office), so I’ve spent the first 2 hours of my day getting specific numbers ready in case he comes into my area, because you better be damn sure I’m going to talk to him about cutting Medicaid.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree we gotta start but we did start. We start and then it's all summarily rejected by the moronic American people who would rather have their 401K's die, their parents die, and their pregnant women die.

You can't effectively fight people who just don't give a shit about anything. I know. I've tried to talk to them.
 
You know how the Repubs are always claiming that the problem of mass killings in this country isn't the readily available accessibility to guns, but rather mental health issues, and we don't need to restrict guns, but better treat the mental illnesses?

And feeble-minded dweebs like Drew parrot the line?

The workforce at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration could be slashed by as much as half as soon as this week
Click to expand...
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Yeah, I agree we gotta start but we did start. We start and then it's all summarily rejected by the moronic American people who would rather have their 401K's die, their parents die, and their pregnant women die.

You can't effectively fight people who just don't give a shit about anything. I know. I've tried to talk to them.
Click to expand...
Well the nice thing is the more of those people that die the less of them we have to worry about.
 
From Isaac Saul over at Tangle. A long read, but I think it hits on a lot of key points:

"When I first saw the news that Republicans were going to push through a CR, my immediate instinct was why wouldn’t Democrats vote for this?

After all, a continuing resolution — almost by definition — mostly continues the spending from a previous appropriations bill. That means Democrats would ensure the Trump administration starts by largely extending Biden’s budget, and doing so with help from Republicans.

That’s one legitimate lens through which to look at the House’s spending bill. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the lone Republican to break ranks in the House and one of the few truly principled spending hawks left in the chamber, has been hammering this exact point.

Massie’s viewpoint has been historically correct. Trump and the GOP are claiming they want to balance the budget, yet they are doing the same thing Republicans have been doing for years now: passing short-term spending deals because they can’t agree as a caucus on the path forward to balancing the budget. It’s a cop out, one they have repeatedly promised not to take — and a promise they’ve repeatedly broken.

And, with this CR, they’re breaking it again. The House’s stopgap bill actually increases spending by $10 billion from 2024, and is projected to reduce the deficit by just $8 billion (or, 0.02% of the current national debt) over the course of the next 10 years. The larger spending bill House Republicans tried to push a few weeks ago would increase the debt and deficit by trillions of dollars. The latest effort from congressional Republicans appears to be an attempt to offload their fiscal responsibility to DOGE, which simply does not have the constitutional power to fix our spending problems.

That’s not a tinfoil hat theory, either; Republicans said it themselves. “I think for a lot of people back home, they’re wondering, why isn’t this just the same thing that Congress always does?” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) told The New York Times. “This is how the president has asked us to fight now, so that they can do what they’re doing with DOGE.”

It is still mindboggling to me that this is how the administration is planning to usher in an era of responsible government spending. Consider these numbers from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which show exactly where each $100 you pay in federal taxes actually goes:

$24 to health insurance programs
$21 to Social Security
$13 to defense
$13 to servicing our debt
$8 to benefits for veterans and federal retirees
$7 to economic security programs
$5 to education
$2 to transportation
$1 to natural resources and agriculture
$1 to science and medical research
$1 to law enforcement
$1 to international programs

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, DOGE’s efforts have focused almost exclusively on areas that add up to roughly two dollars and change — and, in many cases, they haven’t actually addressed perpetual spending but simply laid off workers. As we’ve said over and over and over, the only way to actually address our spiraling debt problem is to reform Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending in a lasting way. Republicans say they want to do that but can never agree on a plan, while Democrats mostly propose modest reforms.

So, should Democrats just vote for this bill to lock in the bulk of their spending priorities and highlight how little Republicans are actually doing to find a long-term solution? Actually, I’m not so sure.

David Dayen (under “What the left is saying”) makes the case better than I could, and his argument rests on two pillars: 1) This bill cuts funding that most Democrats and progressives support. 2) This bill effectively hands the power of the purse over from Congress to the president, and it will further erode the balance of power between the different branches of government.

The second argument is much more salient to me. Trump wants to allow Congress to appropriate funding he never intends to spend, then use that money as a slush fund for whatever he wants, all while allowing the unelected, anonymous, and dishonest bureaucracy that is DOGE to run roughshod through the federal government — cutting all manner of important, bipartisan, and valuable programs without offering any sensible explanations for their decisions (or their mistakes). And, again, he’s doing all that while not actually balancing the budget, the North Star that is supposedly guiding all these decisions.

To put it differently: I don’t just think Trump’s plan is bad in the immediate term, I think it will do lasting damage to our government by becoming a blueprint for how a president can wrest control of spending from the legislative branch. Ed Kilgore rightly described this as “institutional suicide” by the party controlling the legislative branch. Along the way, the president wants to add billions in spending to the bloated and wasteful military, undo funding for tax enforcement, and cut a $23 billion appropriation to a fund that includes care for veterans exposed to burn pits and other carcinogenic chemicals. Trump promised a balanced budget and a booming economy, and so far I can’t see the path to either based on his actual actions.

Once again, I’m left looking at two parties and wondering what the heck has gone wrong. On one side, Republicans (despite what they’re saying) are now backing another CR that would raise the debt and deficit, but this time they’re also endorsing a reduction of their own spending power. Remember, only a year ago these same Republicans ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for pushing through a CR, and that was when they didn’t even control the Senate or White House.

On the other side, we have the feckless Democrats, who I believe will roll over and fold for fear of facing a government shutdown. Insider reporting indicates Senate Dems are scared of what Trump and Musk will do during a shutdown (i.e. which programs they’ll target for furloughs), but if they balk at a shutdown, they’ll be ceding that kind of power to Republicans for at least the next two years — DOGE will get free reign, and Republicans can pass an omnibus bill without any Democratic support. Then, the courts will be the only place where Democrats have much of a chance of slowing this administration down until 2026. So, yes, I think Democrats should stand up and save Republicans from signing away their own power — but I sincerely doubt they will.

Now every Republican in the House (except one principled Kentuckian) is ceding their stated values out of fealty to Trump, every Republican in the Senate (except one principled Kentuckian) is set to do the same, and Senate Democrats appear ready to toss aside their only bit of power and fade to obscurity because they’re afraid of losing a messaging war over a government shutdown. The result, for the rest of us, is that we’re left hoping DOGE — which can’t even accurately itemize its purported savings — will somehow keep the government functioning while also finding trillions of dollars of savings.

I gotta say, I’m not feeling hopeful about that."
 
beaverhockeyfan said:
From Isaac Saul over at Tangle. A long read, but I think it hits on a lot of key points:

"When I first saw the news that Republicans were going to push through a CR, my immediate instinct was why wouldn’t Democrats vote for this?

After all, a continuing resolution — almost by definition — mostly continues the spending from a previous appropriations bill. That means Democrats would ensure the Trump administration starts by largely extending Biden’s budget, and doing so with help from Republicans.

That’s one legitimate lens through which to look at the House’s spending bill. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the lone Republican to break ranks in the House and one of the few truly principled spending hawks left in the chamber, has been hammering this exact point.

Massie’s viewpoint has been historically correct. Trump and the GOP are claiming they want to balance the budget, yet they are doing the same thing Republicans have been doing for years now: passing short-term spending deals because they can’t agree as a caucus on the path forward to balancing the budget. It’s a cop out, one they have repeatedly promised not to take — and a promise they’ve repeatedly broken.

And, with this CR, they’re breaking it again. The House’s stopgap bill actually increases spending by $10 billion from 2024, and is projected to reduce the deficit by just $8 billion (or, 0.02% of the current national debt) over the course of the next 10 years. The larger spending bill House Republicans tried to push a few weeks ago would increase the debt and deficit by trillions of dollars. The latest effort from congressional Republicans appears to be an attempt to offload their fiscal responsibility to DOGE, which simply does not have the constitutional power to fix our spending problems.

That’s not a tinfoil hat theory, either; Republicans said it themselves. “I think for a lot of people back home, they’re wondering, why isn’t this just the same thing that Congress always does?” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) told The New York Times. “This is how the president has asked us to fight now, so that they can do what they’re doing with DOGE.”

It is still mindboggling to me that this is how the administration is planning to usher in an era of responsible government spending. Consider these numbers from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which show exactly where each $100 you pay in federal taxes actually goes:

$24 to health insurance programs
$21 to Social Security
$13 to defense
$13 to servicing our debt
$8 to benefits for veterans and federal retirees
$7 to economic security programs
$5 to education
$2 to transportation
$1 to natural resources and agriculture
$1 to science and medical research
$1 to law enforcement
$1 to international programs

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, DOGE’s efforts have focused almost exclusively on areas that add up to roughly two dollars and change — and, in many cases, they haven’t actually addressed perpetual spending but simply laid off workers. As we’ve said over and over and over, the only way to actually address our spiraling debt problem is to reform Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending in a lasting way. Republicans say they want to do that but can never agree on a plan, while Democrats mostly propose modest reforms.

So, should Democrats just vote for this bill to lock in the bulk of their spending priorities and highlight how little Republicans are actually doing to find a long-term solution? Actually, I’m not so sure.

David Dayen (under “What the left is saying”) makes the case better than I could, and his argument rests on two pillars: 1) This bill cuts funding that most Democrats and progressives support. 2) This bill effectively hands the power of the purse over from Congress to the president, and it will further erode the balance of power between the different branches of government.

The second argument is much more salient to me. Trump wants to allow Congress to appropriate funding he never intends to spend, then use that money as a slush fund for whatever he wants, all while allowing the unelected, anonymous, and dishonest bureaucracy that is DOGE to run roughshod through the federal government — cutting all manner of important, bipartisan, and valuable programs without offering any sensible explanations for their decisions (or their mistakes). And, again, he’s doing all that while not actually balancing the budget, the North Star that is supposedly guiding all these decisions.

To put it differently: I don’t just think Trump’s plan is bad in the immediate term, I think it will do lasting damage to our government by becoming a blueprint for how a president can wrest control of spending from the legislative branch. Ed Kilgore rightly described this as “institutional suicide” by the party controlling the legislative branch. Along the way, the president wants to add billions in spending to the bloated and wasteful military, undo funding for tax enforcement, and cut a $23 billion appropriation to a fund that includes care for veterans exposed to burn pits and other carcinogenic chemicals. Trump promised a balanced budget and a booming economy, and so far I can’t see the path to either based on his actual actions.

Once again, I’m left looking at two parties and wondering what the heck has gone wrong. On one side, Republicans (despite what they’re saying) are now backing another CR that would raise the debt and deficit, but this time they’re also endorsing a reduction of their own spending power. Remember, only a year ago these same Republicans ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for pushing through a CR, and that was when they didn’t even control the Senate or White House.

On the other side, we have the feckless Democrats, who I believe will roll over and fold for fear of facing a government shutdown. Insider reporting indicates Senate Dems are scared of what Trump and Musk will do during a shutdown (i.e. which programs they’ll target for furloughs), but if they balk at a shutdown, they’ll be ceding that kind of power to Republicans for at least the next two years — DOGE will get free reign, and Republicans can pass an omnibus bill without any Democratic support. Then, the courts will be the only place where Democrats have much of a chance of slowing this administration down until 2026. So, yes, I think Democrats should stand up and save Republicans from signing away their own power — but I sincerely doubt they will.

Now every Republican in the House (except one principled Kentuckian) is ceding their stated values out of fealty to Trump, every Republican in the Senate (except one principled Kentuckian) is set to do the same, and Senate Democrats appear ready to toss aside their only bit of power and fade to obscurity because they’re afraid of losing a messaging war over a government shutdown. The result, for the rest of us, is that we’re left hoping DOGE — which can’t even accurately itemize its purported savings — will somehow keep the government functioning while also finding trillions of dollars of savings.

I gotta say, I’m not feeling hopeful about that."
Click to expand...
Jared Golden: Go fuck yourself.
 
rufus said:
You know how the Repubs are always claiming that the problem of mass killings in this country isn't the readily available accessibility to guns, but rather mental health issues, and we don't need to restrict guns, but better treat the mental illnesses?

And feeble-minded dweebs like Drew parrot the line?
Click to expand...
Hey now, Drew is saying this CR is bad, which is why he voted in Susan Collins so she could advance it.

In all seriousness, people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of gun violence than commit gun violence, just like one is far, far more likely to have someone in the household shot by the “protection” gun than shoot an actual intruder, but the minute Republicans start believing in facts is the same minute this world is gonna end.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Yeah, that's great. But, it's been over 15 years of caving to Republicans over and over again because the Democrats are actually interested in Governing and the Republicans are only interested in Power.

It's a no win situation.

I appreciate the fight that AOC, and Bernie, and Warren have had over the years but quite frankly it has failed. I mean, cripes, we thought we had them with the Abortion issue and a majority of white women said, naaah, we don't need any rights there anymore.

If fighting means shutting down the government that's fine, that's great. But it will just lead to winning the midterms and doing "governing" with Republicans again. The pendulum has basically been swinging from the middle to the right and it never enters the left side of the spectrum.
Click to expand...
Those white women just fully believe those who “deserve” an abortion will be able to get one
 
Former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa wrote the following letter to Trump.

Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky with fear and distaste. It is insulting that you expect Ukraine to show gratitude for U.S. material aid in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who have been shedding their blood for over 11 years to defend the free world’s values and their homeland, attacked by Putin’s russia.

How can the leader of a country symbolizing the free world fail to recognize this?

The Oval Office atmosphere during this conversation reminded us of interrogations by the Security Services and Communist court debates. Back then, prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the communist political police, told us they held all the power while we had none. They demanded we stop our activities, arguing that innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms for refusing to cooperate or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Zelensky was treated similarly.

History shows that when the U.S. distanced itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately endangered itself. President Wilson understood this in 1917 when the U.S. joined World War I. President Roosevelt knew it after Pearl Harbor in 1941, realizing that defending America meant fighting in both the Pacific and Europe alongside nations attacked by the Third Reich.

Without President Reagan and U.S. financial support, the Soviet empire’s collapse would not have been possible. Reagan recognized the suffering of millions in Soviet russia and its conquered nations, including thousands of political prisoners. His greatness lay in his unwavering stance, calling the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and confronting it decisively. We won, and today, his statue stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, military and financial aid cannot be equated with the blood shed for Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the world. Human life is priceless. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom—something self-evident to us, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet russia.

We urge the U.S. to uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—nowhere do they suggest such aid is a mere economic transaction.

Signed,
Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland
 
Now that's a letter.

Too bad Donnie's too stupid to understand a word of it, other than Lech is treating him "horribly, unfairly"
 
Fuck off gillibrand

bsky.app

Angus Johnston (@angus.bsky.social)

Gillibrand was shouting in the Dem senate meeting, condemning "no" faction. Phrase "this will not be a normal shutdown" reported widely, but according to TPM she also said: “The VA will not be functioning ... the various NIH trials … will be shut down ... he will declare a state of emergency."
bsky.app bsky.app
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top