Friday, July 04, 2025

All they have to offer is cruelty

Republicans in Congress stabbed the country in the back.  It was a week long assault.  And though many tried, no one was able to stop the country from being repeatedly shanked.   It's depressing as hell, let's not sugarcoat. Nicole Lafond (TPM) observes:


But you can’t spin Americans about their health care. Failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 fueled a Democratic midterm wave the following year. And these cuts, which are going into effect, will do a great deal of tangible damage: $1.1 trillion stripped from the health-care system, including nearly a trillion from Medicaid. Yes, the prototypical Republican politician cares almost nothing about health insurance for the working class and poor — this outpost of socialism in our capitalist economy — but they’ll understand very soon that insulating their constituents from these cuts will not be simple. They may fantasize about a world where Medicaid cuts merely torment Blue America, those big cities stuffed with the urban poor who generally don’t back their candidates. But Medicaid is what keeps rural America afloat, especially the underfunded hospital systems. There’s a reason Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina, backed away from the reconciliation bill: He saw the suffering that was coming.

The victory is Trump’s after all. 

 A handful of Senate and House Republicans have spent the better part of the past month doing performative belly-aching in public about how badly they did not want to pass the legislation that is now headed to White House. For what it is worth, some Senate Republicans like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) did ultimately get changes they favored — like revising the waivers for SNAP cuts to include 10 states with the highest payment-error rates and increased spending on the rural hospital fund — shoved into the final version of the bill before voting for it.

House Republicans can claim no such dignity (and neither can Murkowski, who, after voting for the bill, played dumb about where it was headed).

And he does own it and so do all the disgusting bits of trash that voted for.


But that's not the only news of the week.


That's Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries.  


He fought.  He showed leadership.  


You may remember, or maybe you don't, how people were squealing and whining and attacking him a month or two back.  'Oh, we needed someone other than Hakeem!  Oh, he's worthless!'


No, he wasn't and, no, he isn't.


It was normal to feel depressed over the results of 2024.  We were all reeling.  That's Democrats across the country, that's Democrats in Congress.  We needed to regroup and we needed to figure out how to fight.  


You want to attack another Democrat?  I think we have better things to do in most cases. 


You want to call out someone, go for it.  But it isn't in interesting that earlier this year the call was not -- and is still not -- for Fetterman to go, the call was to oust Hakeem as Speaker.  


Let's pretend, as we always have to, that the attacks on Hakeem had nothing to do with race.  


They do underscore that some of the people trying to speak on our behalf are too damn stupid to speak.  


'So and so had a rally!  He is the face of the Democratic Party!  He is who we need!'


And it's almost always a "he," isn't it?


Patty Murray is and has been one of our great senators.  She's a work horse who gets things done, not a show horse.  Members of Congress like her -- there are very few of them -- are much needed.  We need members great at crafting legislation.  We need members great at so many tasks.  


That does include public speaking at a rally.  


But that's not the only thing needed.


This is a depressing time.  We've never faced anything like this before.


Anyone says otherwise is a liar.


Go one minute and 18 seconds into the video below.



Ben of MEIDASTOUCH is right to be outraged and dismayed over Alligator Alcatraz.  Who does that?  In American history, no one.  No one is that much of a sociopath that they thought cruelty was a good look.  


And no one would put together an administration like the current one.  "Snake oil salesmen, grifters and crooks needed" -- is that how the ad ran?  Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:


Alina Habba, the former defense attorney for President Donald Trump currently serving as his top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, has been under professional investigation for a year in a matter that could strip her license to practice law, NOTUS reported Thursday.

The issue stems from a widely-reported incident in which Alice Bianco, a waitress at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, reported sexual harassment by a fellow employee. Habba allegedly posed as an outside attorney advising her to accept a $15,000 hush money deal, when in reality she was operating on behalf of Trump's club to minimize the amount they would have to pay out.

Habba, who also represented Trump as a private citizen in various matters before he was elected, paid an undisclosed amount of money to Bianco to settle the matter last year, but it didn't end her legal troubles.

"The New Jersey Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Ethics has been looking into allegations that Habba mistreated the employee — becoming her lawyer only to convince her to accept a hush money deal for a paltry sum, all to ingratiate herself with Trump," NOTUS wrote. "The complaint closely adheres to allegations already made in state court — with a complaint backed by dozens of text messages — that Habba befriended Alice Bianco in the summer of 2021 when the 21-year-old waitress had just found an employment lawyer to file a sexual harassment lawsuit. Text messages show that Habba privately disparaged the other lawyer and offered herself up instead, drafting a $15,000 nondisclosure agreement."

“But Trump was lying through his teeth, again,” reports TNR. “The lowest average gas price anywhere in the country Wednesday was $2.71 per gallon in Mississippi, according to AAA. The national average gas price was $3.17 per gallon, which is 3 cents higher than it was a month ago, and 5 cents higher than it was when Trump took office.”


Or take crooked Pam Bondi -- who really needs to grasp that lipstick doesn't cover herpes sores.  Maybe she can get a chair in the Pentagon at Pete Hegseth's Curl Up & Dye and Mister Pete himself can give her a blow out and a make up tutorial?  In the meantime, Aurora DeStefano (2PARAGRAPHS) notes:


Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) put Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice on blast for hiring Jared Wise, who the Deep South Congressman characterizes as “a disgraced FBI agent and right-wing extremist charged with encouraging the murder of police officers.”

Thompson is reacting to reports from multiple sources, including the New York Times, that Wise has been named an advisor to Ed Martin, the attorney Trump’s DOJ has brought on as the director of the new, so-called “Weaponization Working Group” at the Justice Department.


In a functioning world, that doesn't happen.


It can be very depressing.  But look at the Americans across the country who've taken to the streets to protest this cruel and criminal administration.  


And look at the pushback on Chump's war on immigrants. 





It's going to take a lot of work but humanity will win.  Chump will be gone and history will consign him to a chapter on War Criminals and Despots.  He'll be forever remembered as human garbage who could have made the world better but was too greedy and too corrupt to even try.  

On a holiday, I usually do that talking post and do it late at night but a lot of you e-mailed about being depressed over what Congress did.


They did what they did and it's outrageous.  Be angry.  Be depressed.  Don't ignore your feelings.  But Chump is already yesterday.  Today and tomorrow is about reclaiming our country and returning it to democratic values and actual humanity.  


The following sites updated:



 

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