JUST IN: Ryan promises Medicaid, Medicare spending cuts in 2018 to "tackle the deficit" https://t.co/u1Zg7hwzEw pic.twitter.com/17DQUpJW6q
— The Hill (@thehill) December 6, 2017
There's a reason you hear progressives say 1) the GOP plans to slash Medicare & Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the top 1%: and 2) the GOP is willing to blow a hole in the deficit as an excuse to slash Medicare & Medicaid. The reason? Its so true, they actually brag about it. https://t.co/mlPXo8qp9s
— Gene Sperling (@genebsperling) December 7, 2017
Dear media friends, I propose not using the word 'gutting' when referring to reforming entitlement programs – which is definitely needed and can come in many different forms. That seems an unfairly loaded term.
— Maya MacGuineas (@MayaMacGuineas) December 7, 2017
How about not using the unfairly loaded term “entitlement” and instead “social insurance” https://t.co/YqfQhSwmy9
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) December 7, 2017
To reiterate:
There are hundreds of Republican Party members of Congress.
Each of them wakes up every morning and says to himself “today, I am going to abdicate my constitutional responsibility to police the Trump family’s financial conflicts of interest.”
— Subscribe to My Newsletter (@mattyglesias) December 9, 2017
For any given GOP member you can come up with a plausible political/ideological theory for turning a blind eye.
But literally none of them have at any point suggested doing anything at all about any aspect of this mind-boggling corruption.
— Subscribe to My Newsletter (@mattyglesias) December 9, 2017
Quinerly
I was bitching earlier about depressing threads. Swore I was going to tune out and turn on some music. Then this post crossed my news feed. It’s a pile on: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a2b1110e4b022ec613b823f
Ruckus
I said in a previous thread today that the republican party is a gang. Just like a street gang. People identify with it like gang members, the gang is only interested in power and stealing any money they can find. That’s a street gang. People join it because they think that not joining will get them killed, so they join and try to kill everyone not in their gang. They are not a political party, they haven’t been one for at least 60 yrs. They are a gang. They have no qualms about lying, stealing, cheating, treating women like crap, perverting tools like religion for their own goals…..
Yutsano
@Quinerly: I have a hard time taking a writer seriously when they biff a basic fact.
That was not Pruitt. It was Zinke. Hopefully a correction will be issued. The rest is pretty much garbage.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
We had snow here and I am down with a bad cold so I decided to be kind to myself and watch The Crown. Sometimes I reach my saturation point with the national mess we are enduring and I have to take a break.
Steeplejack
This is how you suggest we decompress?! It took me all day and evening to get to a point of relative calm and satiety with smoked brisket, liquor and a brooding Austrian crime movie. Gonna dial in an Elementary rerun and wait for Lupin the Third and Cowboy Bebop on Cartoon Network.
FlipYrWhig
What the what the WHAT is this SNL musical guest?
NotMax
@,a href=”https://balloon-juice.com/2017/12/10/late-night-decompression-open-thread-blame-the-gop-theyve-earned-it/#comment-6671354″>MomSense
Unlikely duet, Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
NotMax
@NotMax
Well, that was messed up. Try again.
@MomSense
Unlikely duet, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
Steeplejack
@FlipYrWhig:
SZA.
Is Major^4 around? I think Phil Simms is about to make another appearance on Elementary.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Tasty, but it takes somuch effort to keep it lit.
(
rimshot
)Mike J
@FlipYrWhig: SZA? She seems, uhm, inoffensive. Not a fave, but I couldn’t work up enough interest to hate her. Five Grammy noms says a lot of people like her.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike J: Sounded like Lauryn Hill having a stroke to me.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Didn’t want to inflame the pork fanatics by using the B*Q word.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Aye, there’s the rub.
piratedan
@Steeplejack: if you get a chance, check out Silver Spoon good storytelling and actual fun characters too… radically different from BeBop but still a great series…
Mike J
@Steeplejack: Smoked brisket is tasty. It is not BBQ. Perhaps under some bizarre regime where smoked beetroot is considered BBQ, but in this world, our shared existence, BBQ is pork. Pig. Swine. Not Beef. Not beets. Not even by Dre.
Steeplejack
@Mike J:
I rest my case.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Oof. Just stop.
Quinerly
@Yutsano: I caught the mistake too. BUT, all in all it’s a depressing list. The judiciary scares me the most.I’m a retired attorney. These are lifetime appointments that are essentially breezing through. With that said, I have a cold and am out of sorts tonight. Seriously thinking about taking a break from all things Trump and Balloon Juice…I’m in the middle of turning my lower level walk out into an apartment/guest quarters/Air BnB and winding down to get on the road for 5 weeks in NM in about a month….so probably should throw my full energy there. Kinda disillusioned about my country. Weary with the Franken mess. Have a nice Sunday. Take care.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
Thanks, I’ll look for it.
Quinerly
@MomSense: Everybody, everywhere has this cold. Mine isn’t at the cough stage and I hope I avoid that…usually don’t get a cough. My problem is a lingering sinus thing…then it works its way to a massive sinus infection. Feel better soon. Hang in there.
Quinerly
@Mike J: @Steeplejack: Eastern NC BBQ is the absolute best. Talk amongst yourselves.?
Whole hog….. PORK
Westyny
@Ruckus: I think they are a crime cartel . . .
Steeplejack
@Quinerly:
I highly recommend saline rinsing for the “sinus thing.” You don’t have to go full neti pot; you can just snort the warm saline water out of a coffee cup, which is what I did. I was in the pool five hours a day teaching and coaching swimming and used to get raging sinus infections. The saline rinsing stopped that in its tracks.
Mnemosyne
@Quinerly:
I took Wednesday evening off and read romance novels. It helped a lot.
Steeplejack
God help me, but I love the Skittles pox commercial.
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: I’m the proud owner of two neti pots. I can talk snot and saline with the best of them.? We are very serious about this kind of stuff at House of Quinerly. Sometimes the system breaks down, though and neti can’t save me. Thanks for piping in…Pool water is the worst…I might be allergic or something. Gave up on pools years ago.
Amir Khalid
It’s not too soon for a Christmas carol, is it? Silent Night in Gaelic.
Quinerly
@Mnemosyne: I went back to Hillerman one night this past week. He puts me in the mood for my yearly SW trip. Also, picked The Book of the Navajo back up last night. That helped. Mostly, it’s this cold, the warring factions over Franken…and my procrastination over some end of the year stuff I have put off. Tomorrow will be better…my neighborhood breakfast gathering for cheap eggs and $2.00 gin Bloody Marys…just off my game right now…out of sorts, I guess. How’s your knee? It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?
Mnemosyne
@Quinerly:
You probably missed it, but it turned out that I messed up my knee even worse than I thought and will need surgery. ? I have an injury so classic that it has its own nickname by orthopedists: “the unhappy triad” of ACL, MCL, and meniscus damage. Now I need to get an MRI to see exactly what I did and what needs to be surgically repaired other than the ACL.
Yep, 2018 is gonna suck. I hate surgery.
Yarrow
I went to a party tonight. It was fun. Ended up walking to go look at lights and I think I walked for two hours. I’m tired. Met some people I didn’t know and politics came up and everyone seemed to know that Paul Ryan is trying to take away their Medicare and Social Security. Found that kind of interesting. No one was old enough to be on it yet, although a few were getting close. No one was happy with the tax bill. One person said they didn’t think it would pass and everyone else said, “They rich donors want their return on their investment! We’re living in a kleptocracy!” Everyone was angry about it.
I’m also in the middle of going through the mountains of paperwork and other similar stuff that piled up over the last several years as my life was chaos. I simply can’t believe the crap I’ve stuck in piles. Lots going into recycling. Plenty for shredding. I know I just stuck all of it in piles because my life was so crazy and making decisions about paper was not something I could do. So it stacked up. I feel like I’ve gone into a time machine and gone back 2-3 years looking at all this crap. It’s hard work going through it. Don’t want to lose something valuable so I have to go through it one piece of paper at a time.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Indeed not!
(Icelandic here)
Quinerly
@Mnemosyne: I did somehow miss the details. Saw a reference that you were (back??) on crutches but missed the background….surgery scheduled when? Recovery time afterwards? So sorry. Knees are tricky. Good luck with everything.
Major Major Major Major
As usual, I decompressed by drawing vampires.
Ruckus
@Westyny:
All a crime cartel is, is a street gang with a lot more territory. I do have to admit that they cover a lot more ground than your average street gang. But that might be because of the money that they get from their wealthy donors. Because is sure isn’t due to their smarts or talents or good looks or impressive resumes.
Mel
@Yarrow: I feel for you. I am going through the same thing. It’s a disconcerting feeling. You know you have to go through the stuff in order to save the necessaries and purge the rest, but going through it all is like re-living a diluted but still unpleasant, vaguely quease-inducing version of the original shitty events. Medical nightmare paperwork, ahoy!
I’m interspersing the paperwork purges with sanity breaks that involve spiked cocoa and either re-reading The Canterbury Tales or binge watching a really awful but weirdly addictive Turkish soap opera.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Steeplejack: it’s catchy. It kinda grows on you.
Yarrow
@Mel: It certainly is like that–the reliving horrible events part. And then the mundane stuff–the receipt for a book I got someone for Christmas, a packing slip for something I ordered online, a list of plants that work in shady areas that I picked up at a garden center. And on and on. There’s even unopened junk mail interspersed in there. I guess I knew it was junk mail but was too overwhelmed to open it and recycle/shred it, so on the pile it went. It’s like an unpleasant time capsule.
Brachiator
Well, you could never say that these goobers are subtle.
This makes it a little easier to oppose them.
TenguPhule
Paul Ryan must die.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: Well played.
Feathers
@Yarrow: @Mel: Team ugly paper represent! I found an old assessment to show the therapist I finally broke down and saw (was initially dubious, but she seems good at convincing me that it’s not me, my family is fucked up), but then could not find it again to take to the doctor I went to see about medication. Financials and creative writing and taxes and medical records and resumes and course papers and book listings and articles from magazines, all jumbled together, neatly, in matched white Container Store cardboard boxes.
Llelldorin
@piratedan:
Sakura Quest as well… My go-to anime when the media gets into “listen to the rural Trump voters” mode.
Aleta
@NotMax:
So many good unexpected pairings for Baby It’s Cold Outside.
Leon Redbone & Zooey Deschanel
Norah Jones – – Willie Nelson
Nina Simone & Ray Charles
Feathers
@MomSense: I’ve backed away from scripted shows and am basically down to watching PBS documentaries. Just got through “The Story of India”. Realized it was a mashup and skipped the Raj went by very quickly, but I really didn’t know much, and can now go back to fill in the history. Realizing that I don’t have any sense of the geography of southern India. Didn’t know there were mountains. Sigh. Always more to learn.
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule:
Kermit
PIGL
@Major Major Major Major: how do you get them to sit still, without biting?
Major Major Major Major
@PIGL: this one was at the office.
TenguPhule
@opiejeanne: It shouldn’t even count as a crime, he’s been fantasizing about killing poor people since college. Its his personal fetish, FFS.
fuckwit
Rethug theme song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I
Millard Filmore
@Brachiator:
But they promised that these tax cuts would pay for themselves!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
Dude hung around the keg at frat parties, dreaming of shutting down Medicaid. How fucked up is that?
Ohio Mom
@Yarrow: I did that once. Or maybe I should say I also didn’t do that once. SSRI’s and a sympathetic friend got me through the stacks of unopened mail.
I’m saying it is doable, you can catch up. It is a big effort but it is achievable.
satby
@Yarrow: @Ohio Mom: been there, still cleaning up. It’s a process. After my hell year of lost job, house, and mother it took me months to start clearing away the wreckage. Especially since I had to move in a chaotic rush, and even things I had sorted to be donated or destroyed ended up on the truck And moving with me! And then we had an election, and it took me months to get the energy for anything other than basic activities of daily living.
Unpleasant time capsule is a perfect description.
satby
At the Christmas market yesterday somelady made a joke about spending her whole SS check there. I said that we might not even get them if the government shut down, she replied “Trump would never let that happen”. Her husband agreed, said he was a businessman and knew how to get things done, and he wouldn’t let that happen on his watch.
I depend on that check, like millions of other people, but a shut down might be the same up call some of these fools need.
Obdurodon
There are many studies around the theme that people of different political persuasions don’t so much lack certain values/virtues as prioritize them differently. For liberals, values like fairness and mercy are paramount. For conservatives, it’s order and loyalty. Especially loyalty. The GOP values loyalty very highly, and when you’re actually in the capitol or the white house or anywhere else actually engaged in the business of governing loyalty is *always* a factor so it effectively crowds everything else out. Sure, GOP members might believe in other things, but not *at the moment when they’re legislating*. It even happens when the loyalty makes no sense, as with near-libertarians allied with theocrats allied with paleos. It’s their team and *in this moment* that’s the first thing to consider. They’ll express their regrets over the “necessary” “compromises” later. So yeah, that’s a long-winded and pretentious way of saying they really are a gang. Some of them might not be bad people in their hearts or away from their jobs, but in their day to day work the *effect* is indistinguishable from pure and intentional evil.
Lurking Canadian
@Brachiator: Can they do that? I thought they had only two chances at reconciliation bills: one per year.
The 2017 was supposed to be healthcare but they bobbled it at the goal line.
The 2018 was the tax cut bill.
Do they even get a third chance to pass something with no filibuster?
Further: could they? They couldn’t get the votes to cut Medicaid in their healthcare bill. Would there really be enough R Senators willing to cut Medicare?
Citizen_X
@Mike J:
Oh, fuck right the fuck off with that bullshit.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
All I ask of the Democrats if they can’t stop the cuts is to ensure that the current addicted to Faux News senior set that put Trump and the rest of these jokers in office suffer with immediate cuts along with the rest of us who will suffer future cuts. If they want to vote for this then they can be first in line to suffer.
Also, since political divisions seem largely cut along an urban-rural divide, I say the first cuts should be to farm subsidies. Those subsidies should be zeroed out before a dime is cut from any other program. If farmers want small government they can be first in line to give up the gravy.
debbie
@TenguPhule:
First we take away his pension and other bennies, just so he can suffer for a while in the knowledge of what it feels like to have what you rely on taken from you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@satby:
He bothers to pay attention to the news how Trump operates?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Lurking Canadian: So far the GOP leadership has shown they don’t give a shit about any rule in both the House and Senate. But gutting SS and Medicare sounds as stupid as their tax cut . It begs the question, is the GOP deliberately trying to lose 2018? Do they figure 2018 is beyond hope, let their freak flag fly and then depend on 2-6 years of Trump vetos? (which sounds pretty stupid considering how easily manipulated Trump is)
barbequebob
@Aleta: Pearl Bailey & Hot Lips Page. IMHO the ultimate rendition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeGXHKzdZwg
B.B.A.
@Lurking Canadian: It’s Calvinball. We proved that when we nuked the filibuster. The Republicans can basically set the entire rulebook on fire and declare that when McConnell says a bill passes, it passes, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They think between the House gerrymander and their natural advantage in the Senate, they’ve got a permanent congressional majority. They may be right.
bemused
@satby:
Cultists just trust and believe their cult leader. Senior citizens with working brain cells pay attention to what happens to their SS and Medicare benefits. The smartest ones know who is to blame for cuts.
J R in WV
@barbequebob:
A thousand years ago, mom and dad took us to St Pete Beach for xmas. We stayed at a beach-front place owned by Don Ho who was famous (a little) for big band music Hawaiian style. Needless to say, in the xmas season his orchestra played in the lounge, where I could only be with parents within 2 or 3 years of 1960 to the best of my recollection.
Being a newspaper family, we had the morning papers from St Pete every day, maybe Tampa too. The thing that stuck in my brain was a 3×4 ad for the Louis Armstrong Orchestra for one night ONLY in a huge rococco theater in ST Pete, featuring Pearl Bailey. I begged, and argued. He was getting up there, we may never see another chance to hear him, etc.
I was unaware of any racial tensions regarding a white family attending a show by a black star, and in the event there were none, the crowd loved him and he loved the crowd. I do not recall if the audience was mixed race or not, it would not have stood out to me if it was. Our seats were a couple of hundred yards from the stage, top balcony in a theater with at least 3 of them… we bought what was inexpensive and still for sale. No doubt there was some counting of money late at night when my little brother and I were fast asleep.
The music was among the best Big Band jazz era, of course. And they did do a few christmas songs. They had to have done “Baby, It’s Cole Outside” and I remember songs from “Hello Dolly”, which was Ms Bailey’s biggest hit. I remember the memory of being there. My early years are such a blur…
But it was great. I’ll have to ask my brother if he remembers that…
No One You Know
@Steeplejack: What movie? Sounds like something I’d love!
Steeplejack (phone)
@No One You Know:
In case you return, it was the first in the Anatomy of Evil series, from 2010. Morose, slightly disreputable psychologist is called in as a consultant by the police to talk to a traumatized witness who can’t remember what she saw. Like a lot of European series, the episodes are feature-length (90-110 minutes).
I see them on MHz, the third-tier Eurotrash channel that is available on some cable systems. All the MHz stuff is available through Amazon Prime, although only some of it is free. Here’s a link to the Anatomy of Evil page for more information. I couldn’t find a trailer on YouTube.
W. Kiernan
Yeah, “entitlement.” How about your car? Is that an “entitlement,” or something you worked for and paid for? You know anybody who bought a house with a thirty-year mortgage? Would you sneeringly call that house “an entitlement,” like the homeowner’s standing there demanding a handout from his social betters?
Well, I’ve been paying into Social Security since nineteen-fucking-seventy. It’s not a handout, it’s mine.