~~ recommended by newestbeginning ~~
 |
Nov. 12: Democrats succeeded in putting the focus on what Trump will do about health care … Trump’s health-care plan isn’t even the germ of an idea of a concept of a plan … Even GOP freaking out over Hegsethian shit-show at the Pentagon … Hope everyone’s ready for new Rep. Adelita Grijalva to release The Epstein Files™ …
 |
Even before the shutdown is officially ended by Congress, there are already signs that the legislative loss for Democrats may turn out to be a political victory.
(Disclosure: Neither you nor other Newsfuckers are in any manner obliged to stop hating the eight Senate Democrats who agreed to end the shutdown without addressing the party’s demand for extended Obamacare subsidies¹. And we can’t know whether holding out longer would have yielded a better outcome!)
The battle was always a contest of pain tolerance.
Could Republicans stand the pain of health costs soaring for 22 million people now learning their 2026 insurance rates? Could Democrats stand the pain of 42 million people losing food stamps, along with thousands of federal workers losing their jobs?
With the shutdown ending, attention is now turning to what Republicans will do about the issue at the battle’s heart: The economy.
And being able to tolerate the health-cost pains of 22 million people is starting to look like not a good look. The battle did a lot to bring Obamacare to the fore of national attention, and reminded everyone that Republicans are in charge.
Of letting those subsidies lapse.
And that’s already complicating things for the GOP, according to one Republican strategist, Doug Heye (hey, Doug? stop being a Republican strategist!)
Heye told Politico, “Once we get past [the shutdown], then things can become a little trickier for the administration and it goes to that issue of cost … whoever is in charge gets the blame for rising prices.”
One person close to what’s left of the White House told Politico, “There’s a lot of [Republicans] who think, ‘I don’t want to go into the beginning of a new year, which is an election year, with premiums going up 25, 30 percent.’”
Good news, lot of Republicans who think that! Premiums aren’t going up 25, 30 percent, they’re going up 250, 300 percent. That’s a lot trickier!
We can see where this pressure is now exerting itself. Reps. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) just wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) asking that the party, after the shutdown, “immediately turn our focus to the growing crisis of health care affordability and the looming expiration of the enhanced Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] premium tax credits.”
On Monday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told Fox that what’s left of the White House has “been wanting to discuss health care this whole time.”
Why won’t anyone let Trump talk about what he’s been wanting to discuss this whole time?!?
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who voted to keep the shutdown going until Obamacare subsidies were restored in full, told the New York Times that the mid-December vote on those subsidies will keep the issue at the fore. And, don’t forget, this shutdown deal expires in less than three months, at the end of January.
If Republicans were never going to extend the Obamacare subsidies they’ve repeatedly not extended, they’ve nevertheless agreed to a deal that keeps the issue at the fore next month and the month after, at least. Unlike some of the people losing Obamacare subsidies, this issue isn’t going away.
Also keeping America’s attention on the issue: Trump’s refusal to end the shutdown of his brain…
TRUMP STILL DUMB Trump’s concept of a plan for health care appears to be to send people some money that’s not enough to pay for health care but enough to undermine Obamacare.
Instead of federal subsidies going to insurance companies to bring down the cost of Obamacare plans, Trump over the weekend recommended to Senate Republicans that:
“…the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE...”
…so THE PEOPLE can send it to the money-sucking Insurance Companies.
Trump repeated his dumb idea Monday because he’s not smart enough to realize it was dumb:
“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies and I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard [sic] over the next short period of time—where the people get the money,”
(…which then goes to the insurance companies.)
One likely effect: America’s remaining healthy people could pull out of Obamacare entirely and use that Hundreds of Billions of Dollars by sending it to non-Obamacare money-sucking Insurance Companies. Which would leave Obamacare without the revenue needed to ensure that sick and high-risk people can afford their insurance.
Which is how insurance works, money-sucking and otherwise. Trump’s plan, for instance, would not include urgently needed medical aid such as someone telling Trump how insurance works.
MEDIA WATCH It’s not just the liberal (sic) media targeting affordability. Those populist radicals at Fox are also sounding a lot like Zohran Mamdani these days.
Mediaite’s Colby Hall attributes this to Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race. Two weeks before the election, the word “affordability” was uttered by Fox utterers just 42 times. Then 102 times the following week. Then 295 times after Mamdani won.
But that also coincides with mounting attention on the shutdown. Which was also about affordability.
In line with that, Laura Ingraham did her best in an interview that aired Monday to explain to Trump that he’s fucking up by dismissing the issue of affordability. Trump responded by dismissing the issue:
“[I]t’s a con job by the Democrats. Are you ready? Costs are way down.”
In fact, costs are so high that as of last week even Republican candidates were paying for them.
ALSO Trump on Sunday also said tariff revenues will be used to pay $2,000 to everyone except high-income people. Paying $2,000 to even just half the country would cost $300 billion. Tariffs have brought in $120 billion. Because math is a Democratic con job.
STILL INSIST ON HATING THOSE EIGHT DEMS? If you’re still slavering for something to whet your keen, glistening hatred for the Senate Democrats who voted to end the shutdown, this might get your salivary glands going…
The deal means less protection against foodborne illness and cooties. Remember TFN flagged that the deal includes a funding bill for the Dept. of Agriculture (USDA)? Well, The Lever reports that the bill’s changes include:
Fewer rules protecting food at farms and restaurants
Fewer new rules on ultraprocessed foods.
Apparently no one ran this by Robert Flophouse Kennedy, Jr., sworn enemy of ultraprocessed foods (but connoisseur of uninspected roadkill).
REMEMBER Groceries and energy bills are a problem, yes. But the systemic problem predates consumer inflation. Life itself is increasingly unaffordable. Not just health care. Education. And housing. For which Trump’s only remedy is this…
Trump Innovates Plan to Make Housing Wildly More Costly
Pres. Donald Trump over the weekend deployed every pound ounce iota atom sub-atomic particle of business savvy that he has to pioneer a new kind of mortgage.
Because when is innovation in the financial sector not a boon to humanity and self-fulfillment? Behold, Newsfuckers, Trump’s social-media post, the resurrection of indentured servitude:
 |
Apparently, Trump seems to be under the impression that bigger numbers are better? Could explain his golf game!
And never mind Trump calling America’s most democratic-socialist president great.
Extending repayment of a mortgage loan for half a fucking century would, of course, mean paying off interest for much longer before even touching the principal of the loan. And the average age of a new homebuyer is 40. You’ll own your home outright when you’re 90, according to Democratic con-job math.
Lower monthly bills? Uh, maybe! But definitely:
Insanely increased total amount of your money going to the bank.
Wildly higher odds that you will never own your fucking home outright, let alone be able to afford modifications such as destroying the East Wing.
To put it in perspective, 50 years is just one twentieth of a thousand-year reich. Just not a thousand-year Robert Reich. The other kind.
Asked about the MAGA backlash to this big-bank giveaway, Trump very coherently explained to Fox, point by face noise, why this is a great idea:
“It’s not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years and whatever you just — you pay, you pay something less from 30, that some people had a 40 and then the, now they have a 50. All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit."
So, remember, MAGA, if anyone dares question the wisdom of Trump’s plan, just quote the man himself: “You pay something less from 30, that some people had a 40 and then the, now they have a 50.” What don’t you then the, now understand?
According to CBS, the proposal wasn’t vetted before Trump shared it, extending Trump’s perfect record of improperly inspected real-estate projects.
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE HURTIN’ The guy who pitched this to Trump is Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, the same brainiac who gins up mortgage-fraud charges against Trump’s political enemies.
And the Wall Street Journal just found out that fired ethics watchdogs at Fannie Mae, which supports home purchases by buying mortgages from lenders, were investigating Pulte before they got fired and/or that’s why they got fired.
The watchdogs were investigating whether Pulte improperly obtained mortgage records of Trump enemies including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. Statistically, being a Trump enemy is the number-one indicator of possible mortgage fraud.
Senate GOP Reveals Devastating Attack on Pentagon by Hegseth and Flunkie Allies
Even Republican senators are getting pissed off at the Pentagon running rogue. No, I’m not referring to the 18 19 murderous boat attacks. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appears to be the only GOP senator who’s got a problem with The Boat-iac Killer™ using the U.S. military with maritime malice aforethought fore and aft.
No, it turns out there’s something else that’s Pentagone awry.
The Armed Services Committee was considering the nomination of Austin Dahmer as assistant secretary for strategy, plans, and forces. But his title was changed without telling the Senate until last week. No, not the name “Dahmer.” (Obviously any nominee of Pres. Donald Trump is gonna keep that name.)
Literally the Pentagon mentioned that Dahmer’s title is a new one just two days before the hearing. Which wouldn’t matter much except the Pentagon claimed it was just the title and even Republican senators pointed out that this was a lie.
It’s all very inside-baseball stuff — with the fun bonus of “Dahmer”! — but the gist is that the Pentagon policy shop under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been just as messy as you’d expect being run by a guy literally named Dahmer.
In fact, it’s such a mess that senators haven’t been able to get answers from the policy shop on a range of fuckups. So, instead of using the confirmation hearing to vet the nominee, they used it to pick Dahmer’s brain.
Three Quickies
Trump is expanding his immigration-agent deployments to more cities, namely New Orleans and Charlotte, NC. Predictably, crime in both cities was already declining dramatically thanks to the soft-on-crime policies of criminal-coddling Pres. Joe Biden. But falling crime rates don’t matter as much as the fact that video caught a mentally disturbed Black guy killing a young white woman in Charlotte and Louisiana’s Republican governor asked Trump to come to New Orleans and show us his man-boobs.
In case anyone’s wondering why a mayor-elect whose name rhymes with 4chan Dasani might not support² the idea of an official Jewish state, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday voted to advance a bill to establish the death penalty for Palestinians who kill Israelis but not Israelis who kill Palestinians. Most of the Knesset boycotted the vote, but it wasn’t just
hard-linersracists who voted for it.Newly elected Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is scheduled to be sworn in at 4pm eastern time today. That will give Democrats an additional vote. And it’ll provide the clinching vote for a resolution to release The Epstein Files™ that’s been waiting so long it’s almost too old for Jeffrey Epstein and whoever his best friend for 15 years might have been. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi didn’t answer when asked whether The Files include pictures of pre-President Donald Trump with topless pre-pubescent girls.
Taking Action
If you’re in Savannah — as I was last week! — you can help Origin Coffee Bar feed people deprived of food stamps due to Trump suspending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Origin is helping the way government should: Tell ‘em you’re on SNAP and your meal is free. No paperwork. No ID. Just people helping people. I’ll bet a hundred joints are doing this around the country. Share your local one in the comments!
Hey, kids, comics! New York’s Hands Off NYC Day of Community Action on Sat. Nov. 14, will include making ‘zines and posters and distributing them out in the “real” world. Comic luminaries including Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Joe Illidge, and Spencer Ackerman will be there. Details here. (I wasn’t invited despite writing two (2) Batman stories, but should I crash anyway?)
If you’ll be in the DC area next week, there’s three days of events starting Nov. 20 and culminating in a Nov. 22 rally calling for elected officials to push for impeaching Pres. Donald Trump on your choice of charges. (h/t)
Nothing near you, sweet, alienated Newsfucker? Go check out mobilize.us, find your people, and feel good by doing good.
Don’t feel like leaving the house? Sign up for phone banking on Thursday, Nov. 13, to flip a Tennessee state House seat month right here.
No comments:
Post a Comment