American Politics 4.0 - Orangeyou Glad He’s Back?

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

Oz is not good at math or is a liar...or both

https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.s.../3m4y5nve5p72f

Oz: We thought it was 125 million pounds. Our estimate is Americans will lose 135 billion pounds by the midterms

He is talking about weight loss drugs the admin is championing but cant help himself by inflating the results. 135 billion pounds, 342 million population is over 390 pounds lost by each person.

Maybe he's talking about the turmoil in the markets this week and expressing it in pounds sterling for some reason.

[dino7c]

Weekend and Trumpy's

[Senator Clay Davis]

The worst part about all the dick riders in his inner circle is you know they are gonna be rushing to publishers the second he dies to write the books about how often they had to smell his #### stained diaper.

[WideReceiver]

Wrong thread

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Strongly disagree on a 'sliver.' First off, between Marketplace plans/Medicaid expansion, that includes 45 million. Marketplace alone is 24 million. Beyond those numbers: if ACA subsidies are gone, fewer people will purchase insurance because they can't afford it, and if fewer people pay for insurance, those who do pay for insurance will pay more (because when people go to the ER with serious problems, someone's gotta pay for that care).

Subsidies aren't gone, they are just removing the covid era enhanced subsidies. I agree it is a bad thing, but you are overstating the numbers significantly affected. If you look at CNN's charts, the increases are fairly modest for most groups. $5/month for low income earners to $10-$15 for younger people approaching 100k/year. Like everything ACA, some groups get hosed, and in this case it looks like the older upper middle income class. Unless you have better numbers, it looks like maybe 10% or so are facing significant hikes in the $50 or more per month range.

To the best I can tell, potentially ~3 million could lose Medicaid, while the rest of the Medicaid recipients are unaffected. I believe that many of those denied Medicaid become eligible for the fully subsidized ACA, which some people prefer anyway.

I don't see that more than 5-6 million will enjoy a tangible victory. It's worth fighting for them, but to what cost?

Where's the empathy for Federal workers who are now looking at a third and forth missed paycheck. I'm sure can finagle their way through one lost paycheck if they know the money is coming eventually. The second one gets a little more worrisome. By the third and forth, they are going to be going passed 30 days late on Mortgage, rent, car loans, and credit card bills, and getting delinquent on utility bills. That's going to have lasting effects on their lives, and gets even more serious if they start getting into 5th and 6th lost paychecks. Some are expected to show up to work with no money to pay for food or gas. Are they willing combatants in this fight?

I'm in PA and our insurance hikes are relatively modest (I'm self-employed so getting mine through PA's ACA marketplace, and mine went up just over 20%), but some states are going up 100% or more, and people just cannot afford that. This also goes hand in hand with medicaid cuts, which will obliterate a major revenue stream for hospitals, especially rural ones.

I don't think any states are going up by 100%, I think certain income brackets and age brackets are. And in some cases going up by 100% is on the lower income side where they may go from $2 to $4 a month or something. I'm happy to be proven wrong, as it is hard to unpack the effects.

Your point about rural hospitals also applies to your point below about the hot stove and living with the consequences, as those will be largely Trump voters affected, and is a direct result of GOP action.

At this point, things keep getting worse one way or another. By hammering home that the GOP owns this - refusing to negotiate, Trump refusing to release the SNAP funding he's been ordered to release by the courts, not seating a duly elected house representative - and doing it all because they don't want to release the Epstein files? The pain is going to start to get to people, and most are realizing who's to blame, as evidenced by Tuesday's results.


Again with the analogy that some people need to touch the stove to realize it's hot. Voters are being forced to live with the consequences of their vote last year, and I don't think Dems should bail the GOP out of this. It's ugly right now, but honestly even if they cave, it's still going to be ugly, just with better access to SNAP (though the BBB already added restrictions to eligibility and shifted some/most responsibility to the states so it's already been impacted regardless). And protecting healthcare access/affordability, I think, is a pretty good line in the sand.

Federal workers are paying a price, travelers are going to start paying a price. As more people are directly affected, they are going to want a deal done and not want to be sacrificed for a Democrat political win.

[puffnstuff]

Its not a percentage increase example but if the ACA tax credits expire, a family of four in AZ making $130K will see their premium increase by nearly $10K.
That was just the first example that I came across.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

Its not a percentage increase example but if the ACA tax credits expire, a family of four in AZ making $130K will see their premium increase by nearly $10K.
That was just the first example that I came across.

Yeah, and that's terrible. It's always been a problem with ACA. It's great for some income levels, and terrible for some slices in that upper middle class type range. If they were some level above $130k, and they'd have already been paying that higher amount because they'd have phased out of the subsidies. How many people are in these income brackets with the more drastic increases?

I think it is good that the democrats are fighting it, but I don't know that a federal worker wondering how they are going to get their basic necessities is going to think it is worth it from keeping $130k earners from having to pay an extra $450-500/month (It's an above the line tax deduction, so will be less than the full amount) for health insurance.

[SutterBrother]

Imagining what is in Trump's Brain

Interesting Essay from a guy who studies authoritarians. Basically the consistent belief systems.

Performance artists. People like Trump and Putin are not politicians; they are artists who create alternate realities. They tell stories, invent alternative facts, enact daily dramas, construct show trials and reinvent religions — they build a world. In their world, the people who felt humiliated are now dominant and doing the humiliating. Russia felt humiliated by the West in the 1990s. Many working-class American voters have felt humiliated by coastal elites for decades. In this alternative world, the snobs suffer. People support an authoritarian not because they like this or that policy but because they embrace the authoritarian’s artistic vision. Performance artists like Trump and Putin can be dishonest, offensive and outrageous, but there is one rule: They must never be boring.

Warriors and bureaucrats. In the minds of the authoritarian wolves, history is a Manichaean struggle. It’s not between left and right or rich and poor; it’s between the warriors and the weenies. The warriors see themselves as the strong ones, the men and women of steel, the masters of aggression. They are the kinds of men you saw at the Republican National Convention — Dana White, Hulk Hogan — the kinds of men Pete Hegseth and JD Vance are playacting at. The warriors recognize one another — the AfD in Germany; Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. There’s a hint of the wild animal to them: no rules, no limits, just the law of the jungle.

The bureaucrats, in their eyes, are the PowerPoint people, who went to law school (like every Democratic presidential nominee after 1980) — the weaklings who have segregated themselves at fancy conferences where they nibble canapés and don’t have to encounter brutal reality. They are seen as emasculated types who take paid paternity leave, admire the E.U. and get intimidated into telling you their pronouns.

Archive Link

Other traits

Verticality - always in the big chair in the big office at the top of the hierarchy
Unpredictability - lackies rise and fall at a whim
Acts of Violence - kill randos now and again to show you're a "protector"
Stoke anger - direct popular discontent to keep it off yourself
Digital Somalia - sow chaos to make sure the rules that govern the world don't apply
Greatness - talk about how great you are