A senator of France, Claude Malhuret, gave a speech last week that is being heard around the world. The Atlantic has published a translation. I urge you to read it. “Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you” Malhuret said. Europe has to defend Ukraine alone.
My hapless U.S. Representative, Mike Lawler, was a guest speaker at a rally yesterday and did not have a good time.
The message was clear from some 3,000 people who rely on Medicaid, their caregivers and the agencies that support them: Protect Medicaid.
At the “Rally in the Valley,” held Friday, March 7, at Clover Stadium, people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid, their support workers and agencies that serve the disabilities community came together to advocate for the federal healthcare program that supports low-income and disabled people. …
… The focus of much of the crowd’s ire: a federal budget blueprint, backed by Republicans in Congress, that experts say would lead to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
And they let U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, an invited speaker who had voted for the plan, know exactly how they felt about it. …
… “I understand the concern about Medicaid,” Lawler said. Invoking record federal debt and spending, he said, the goal was to “eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.”
Sporadic boos started building.
It got rowdier from there. Lawler is truly in a box now. Rockland County is just west of Westchester County, on the other side of the Hudson River. It is redder than most of New York; last year its voters chose Trump over Harris, 55 percent to 44 percent. Statewide, it was 56 percent to 43 percent in Harris’s favor. Lawler won in Rockland with 58 percent of the vote last year. So this should be a safe space for him. But I guess not.
We’re about a week away from government shutdown time. In the House, Speaker Johnson came out with a continuing resolution bill that would keep federal agencies funded through September. It does call for a reduction in nondefense spending, but the news stories aren’t saying if any programs in particular are called out for reduction. Democrats are vowing not to support it and are challenging the Republicans to pass it by themselves.
I guess you heard about Trump confusing “transgender” mice with “transgenic” mice. This amused me:
I love that cute mouse diva.
I heard that a large contingent of transgenic mice held a weekend cocktail party recently, and after a few martinis, the mice were yukking it up and talking about rumors they had heard that the tastiest scraps in America are to be found in the kitchens of Mar a Lago. I think they were talking about chartering mouse-buses, but I'm pretty sure that's just a rumor. After all these mice were three sheets to the wind!
It is about time we deal with these major problems like trannies. Rachael Maddow noted a sweep of the Defense web sites found a deep state recruitment ad aimed at filling the armed services with LBGTQ people featuring a vintage WWII airplane sporting the name Enola Gay. Fortunately, the doge bags got that scrubbed from the Defense web. That deep state lurks everywhere. We've got big balls on the job now, so the only thing you have left to fear is rampant white (With suit and tie) collar crime on whatever drugs they need. We launder the money for you via Crypto currencies in Russia and make sure you avoid the tax man. Making the county and the world safe for gangsters, our style. You just thought the g in Maga stood for great. Haha we all know it really stands for gangster. Rudy has been thrown under the bus but his spirit lives on and on and on…
Regarding Lawler and the town hall uproar… the GOP is canceling those type of events but the fact that they have happened means some considerable portion of Republican voters got the word (from where? – is Fox reporting it?) that benefits that THEY also depend on could be interrupted.
When your worldview is that there are good guys and bad guys with no overlap, you can get suckered into thinking Trump knows who the bad guys are and he can eliminate them where the evil Democrats are recruiting them. Nuance is totally lost on people devoted to a simplistic philosophy that does not distinguish between facts and lies.
So how did it happen only six weeks in that they are packing town hall events with rational concerns? Maybe fear. Limbaugh stoked paranoia, not confidence. Musk and his chainsaw advertise the indiscriminate destruction. (Musk is not their guy, and never was.) Trump is not delivering on the issues he ran on. Nothing is happening with food prices. The roundup of dangerous criminals is a fizzle. There was no discrimination in pardoning the J6 people – making amends for the patriots but leaving in place the decisions of juries on violent offenders. Inviting the Tate brothers back to America reeks – even the governor of Florida smells the stench. Gas prices are not coming down. There may be something to the libruls accusation that services to white people will be cut to pay for tax cuts for the rich. It's being debated in that frame between Republicans as the budget is being debated. Tariffs are on, then off, then on, then off. What gives? We're supposed to be buried in free money from tariffs – why the delay unless you know that it's not gonna work when the other countries don't roll over. (Canada and Mexico are fighting back.)
They expected Trump to cut corners to get things done. Democrats have all these rules and procedures. Trump was gonna cut through the crap for ME. But nothing has gotten better and the way Musk is tearing stuff up, I'm not sure if my Social Security check will be deposited on time.
A confidence game is on the way to unraveling when the victim loses confidence. Watch the polls. Trump, when he senses he's losing his grip on the rubes, will switch to a different trick. Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, NATO, ending the Dept of Education… these are Trump's go-to distractions but I don't think the voters are gonna be distracted. Attacks on these do nothing for the voter – what about the price of eggs?
So the Republicans avoid meeting constituents. And the Democrats are eager to talk to voters. Who can direct the narrative?
Consumer confidence (or lack of) tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think a serious dip is inevitable on Wall Street, and a trend up in unemployment. Musk has a plan to wreck the federal government. The GOP wanted reform, whether they use the word or not, because they are not accepting a reduction in benefits to THEM. Musk and the Freedom Caucus are determined to eliminate the social safety net. These can't be reconciled. And Trump does not dare to cross Musk when the megaphone of Twitter can be turned against Trump.
Putin and Xi love American turmoil, Putin gets Ukraine (and other east European territories, Xi gets Taiwan and the South China Sea.)
Are Republicans stupid or do they support Putin/Xi no matter the facts?
I blame, in part, private schools, for the stupidity.
Don't forget home schooling which can lead to under-socialization and charter schools which can lead to mis-socialization. Even some public schools can be suspect with community bias toward a company or institution. True that private school have an agenda for indoctrination over education and some form of elitism that can be quite perverted.
Was it not a farce, spy, comedy show which had chaos as the name of the foreign spy group? Maxwell Smart possibly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCoGRhPcfTs&t=97s
The real danger of charter schools isn't mis-socialization; it's that they're being paid to provide education, while not meeting any of the normal rules for educational providers.
So they don't promise to be as good or as efficient, or as capable at testing, as public schools, and, they don't have to provide a Free and Appropriate education to all students, including those with special needs.
But they can suck up money that was supposed to go to the pubic schools, and skim a bunch off for themselves, and then, if they run enough schools, get to go "whoopsie, we underbid, we have to stop classes NOW unless you pay us more money!"
The money they skim buys local politicians who will insist the charter provides excellent value for your educational dollar, and approve the overages. Et voila, the French might say, if they were soulless enough to participate in a scheme to swipe money and education from children.
Not that I have any feelings about this :-).
There may be something to the libruls accusation that services to white people will be cut to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
It just blows my mind, even for them, that these white Trump voters actually thought this. The math never added up, nor did having a result that wouldn't impact them make any sense. Even if Trump was able to do what they thought, to somehow take every social service and every federal job only from non-white people, leaving them untouched as Trump voters, not only would it not be enough to make an appreciable dent in the deficit, but wouldn't be enough to also cover the costs of the huge tax cuts the GOP is planning on lavishing on the wealthy, PLUS make the 2017 tax cuts permanent.
I think about that woman in WV who lost her federal job at Treasury, and that Forest Service worker in MI who lost hers, both Trump voters, who still hedge when they're asked if they still support Trump. They're not remorseful for knowing that Trump is hurting fellow Americans, only devastated that their hateful hypocrisy caught up with them.
The GOP version of reform:
As a sign of the times, the wife was in the St. Vinny's thrift store on, like, Tuesday morning and was disturbed by this middle-aged white dude berating the cashier for her wokeness. He was literally screaming this drivel about how TFG was going to get all of her woke types fired and that she was some kind of commie criminal. When she just looked at him with a look of complete confusion, he went on to berate her about her early hair loss. The wife and a couple of other customers started to just say "leave now, leave now, leave now…" and he left. It was surreal. The weird thing is that this is not the first time she has encountered older men berating the cashiers at the St. Vinny's about making America great again. St. Vincent the Woke. Yep, I read "The lives of the Saints" to see which one is the most woke.
Balloon-juice.com had a bit of a rundown on it, https://balloon-juice.com/2025/03/10/monday-morning-open-thread-budget-crunching-the-gops-dishonest-continuing-resolution/ and it zeroes out some obviously important stuff, like paying for veterans harmed by toxic burn pits, agent orange, etc..
I'm trying to get on Social Security Disability, which usually includes Medicaid. Both benefits are at risk, because I have an invisible disability, and unless my doctors have *crushed* it, payments for people like me are considered a waste. It costs about $7500 just to get the doctors to do the exams safely. I don't want to imagine what would happen to me if I didn't have nearly ten grand I could blow on torturous testing protocols.
"What's 'safe'?" It needs to be kept out of my medical record, until my attorney determines is will point to my disability, and not *away* from it. This might sound a bit cagey (and it is), but it's exactly the same as an attorney preparing to present evidence in court – making sure the right evidence is there to be found, while avoiding any confusing evidence (if possible). It's *hard* to win disability, when you look normal.
People like me, we're supposed to go off and die somewhere, in the mind of MAGA. We're "waste" or "fraud", I reckon.
Um. My comments seem to be vanishing. Probably my browser.