The only BBB I might appreciate is the Better Business Bureau. This new bill the Republicans are foisting off on us is a blatant grift, and we’re just sitting here watching it pass.
What the Big Beautiful Bill
contains is a give-away for the rich, while taking away any benefit to the poor and removing any limits on Trump’s power.
If this passes, we won’t have another election.
To those of you who don’t know what’s buried in this Big Bogus Bill… Prepare yourself for what’s coming.
If the Senate passes the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and Trump signs it, that’s it.
It becomes law. And here’s what that really means:
« He can delay or cancel elections—legally.
« He can ignore Supreme Court rulings for a year or more. « He can fire government workers for political disloyalty.
« Judges can’t enforce their own orders.
« Protests can be tracked and criminalized.
» LGBTQ+ rights, education, health care, and media? Gutted.
« Your VPN? Tracked. Your vote? Suppressed. Your speech? Flagged.
This bill doesn’t break the law. It rewrites the law so Trump never has to break it again.
We don’t need to wonder what would happen if authoritarianism came to America.
It’s here—in 1,100 pages, dressed up as “freedom.”
If you’ve ever said, “It won’t be that bad” or “The courts RS TR T just know: this bill makes it so they can’t.
Share this. Speak up. Show up. Now.
Because if this passes, the next vote might be the last one that matters.
It’s going up before the Senate next, the sanctuary for privilege, so I don’t have a lot of hope that it will be shot down. We are so screwed.
Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” budget squeaked through the US House of Representatives last Thursday – a shiny populist package hiding a brutal class agenda. No taxes on tips! Bigger child tax credits! But look closer and the bill is a sleight of hand. The middle-class perks expire in 2028 – just as Mr Trump’s second term would end – while permanent tax cuts for the rich, and delayed cuts to means-tested welfare, entrench inequality. It’s not a budget. It’s a bait-and-switch. It turns Democrats’ fiscal caution into a liability – one that punishes their own base. Republicans understand what Democrats still don’t: deficits aren’t the danger. It’s what you do with them that matters.
This bill supercharges inequality: a $1.1tn giveaway to Americans earning more than $500,000 a year – funded by pushing poorer families off Medicaid and food assistance. It slashes green energy subsidies. Experts say it could add $3.1tn to the debt – but it’s more than millionaire tax breaks. It raises Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding by 365% for detention, 500% for deportations – fuel for Mr Trump’s crackdown.
It’s breathtaking how quickly the USA flushed itself down the crapper.
I like Elle Cordova, she doesn’t even have to sing to put a smile on my face.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is simply the realisation of Project2025. Selling the US for parts, killing the vulnerable and poor, making the very rich much richer. It was all out in the open before the election, and yet here we are. And I don’t see any guillotines being constructed.
USA lacks an efficient opposition party
The Republicans demand purity tests for their politicians. It is time Democrats do the same, and chase off the inefficient remoras.
…And this is why every single Dem politician should have to answer a few simple yes/no answers before the primaries:
Are you prepared to literally risk being arrested to defend civil rights?
Do you support increased federal protection for voting rights?
Do you support medicare for all?
Do you support extending the supreme court beyond the current nine judges?
Do you support the LGBT minorities?
Do you support rising the minimum wage to the level of the 1960s adjusted for inflation?
Do you support paid leave for pregnancy?
Will you vote to block every single Republican candidate until the rule of law has been restored?
Do you support bringing back the postal service to the level it was before Trump and help people vote by mail?
(You can add many more)
Any single “no” : Primary them!
We have seen the heritage Democrats fail fighting off authoritarian rule. They must step down
Well that’s… distinctly worrying.
The cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will all but wreck the US health care system.
A lot of hospitals and health clinics are losing money these days. A lot of rural hospitals and some in the urban areas will end up closing down.
Repost
I and many have been following the budget bill atrocity story right now in Congress.
Those cuts to Medicaid are going to all but destroy the health care system in the USA!!!
Here is what will happen by example.
.1. My local nonprofit giant regional medical center is running at a loss right now. They are losing a few million dollars a year, not a lot considering their size but not sustainable.
.2. Here is why.
75% of their income is Medicare and Medicaid.
These government program’s reimbursement levels haven’t kept up with expenses. They pay less and less of what medical care actually costs.
Also, a lot of Medicare and Medicaid patients aren’t paying their copays. Some think they are optional but a lot of them more or less can’t. They don’t have the money.
.3. The system right now is stable but starting to lean towards collapse.
If the GOP cuts deeply into Medicaid and also cuts Medicare (there are Medicare cuts in the bill), this hospital system of one main center and 8 satellites is in serious trouble. It will fail one way or another. Most likely, it gets sold to private equity, which has a history of never working and eventually ends in bankruptcy. Possible the state steps in but that isn’t likely because the states have their own financial problems.
BTW, this regional center is in a well off area of the West Coast. There is a lot of money floating around here.
I’m sure it is a lot worse in rural areas and less well off areas.
I can’t tell you how many hospitals, health care systems, and medical clinics will end up in big trouble and/or close down.
But it will be a whole lot.
Where does this list come from, and what parts of the bill is it talking about? Especially the part about canceling elections.
If you come fleeing to Europa, you’re gonna confuse the radical right so badly. They hate refugees, but your skin’s not brown!
[I see that John Harshman beat me to it.]
I’ve heard about all the funding cuts and the bit that makes it impossible for judges to issue contempt citations; but I haven’t heard about any of the other stuff (e.g., “He can delay or cancel elections—legally.”); and I’d guess that I would have since they’re biggies. I’d like to see some citations for those.
The bill also removes coverage for trans HRT and surgeries under medicaid which would affect over 100,000 trans people nationwide, including myself. It is absolutely genocidal.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/house-spending-bill-now-bans-medicaid
I agree with John Harshman and billseymour, where’s this bit about canceling elections coming from? This is the first I’ve heard about that. If that really is buried in the Big Bullshit Bill, you’d think the Dems would be howling about it. Some proof, please.
I just did an AI search and this is the answer it came up with concerning canceling elections.
Because you can trust AI, who are programmed by corporations that have already caved to Trump… But, yeah, I would like to see the bill itself, not some AI analysis. Thing is, it would not surprise me if something like this was snuck in some place, as some addendum, which even most Dems have not been allowed to see yet, given that they pushed this crap through in the middle of the night, in as close to a secret session as you can manage while play acting at having actually voted on it legitimately. But, I still want to see it.
That said – I can easily imagine Trump, and some of the leeches attached to his ass, lying and claiming that it gave him these powers, even when it doesn’t, and even when its literally not constitutionally possible for a mere bill, as apposed to an amendment, to do any of those things. And, if he did lie, and claim he now had the power to do so, who would stop him, the courts he is trying to defy, the DOJ, which is in his pocket, or.. who exactly?
My layman understanding is that most arguments revolve around section 70302 which limits the ability of courts to enforce actions via contempt charges. If courts can’t enforce any injunctions or lawsuits, then they are indeed free to do whatever they want without recourse.
A couple of sources for those asking:
• From the Campaign Legal Center (CLC): “These Hidden Provisions in the Budget Bill Undermine Our Democracy” (here) which sites two provisions: Section 70302 and Section 43201(c). Section 70302 is mentioned above. Section 43201(c) blocks laws restricting enforcement of state and local laws regulating the use of AI in political and election campaigns. As I recall there was a kerfuffle over AI generated misinformation spread through social media during the Brexit election and the 2020 election in the US. This AI campaign was underwritten in part by billionaire Robert Mercer through his bag man, Steve Bannon.
• And if you’re a fast reader, The Palm Beach Post has a PDF of the bill here…all 1,116 pages of it.
Yeah, I think the point isn’t that the bill explicitly allows Trump to cancel elections… it’s that the bill makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to force Trump to hold one. Or to actually abide by any independent results.
As was made obvious during Trump’s first term (though clearly not everybody was paying attention, and some of those who were liked it that way) a lot of the guardrails on democracy in the U.S. are traditional or ceremonial at best; once the top positions of all three branches of government were essentially captured by the Republicans, there is absolutely nothing within the system stopping Trump from just doing what he wants because he can count on the other two branches not actually standing up to him in sufficient numbers to stop him. The Democrats being so focused on ‘the process’ works against them when the process itself has been subverted; and worse, right now the Republicans are the party with the younger average age in the House; multiple Democrats have died in office over the last few months.
Which means that actions from outside the system may be the only thing left soon enough.
It’s worth noting that the guy who tried to shoot Trump was previously a Trump supporter as far as we can tell. Once the leopards start seriously eating people’s faces, not everybody that has been wound up into a frenzy is going to be convinced that it was the other party’s fault.
5calls.org
That’s a website which lists issues and connects you with people who candors something about them. Spread the word.
But it isn’t Trump or the federal executive branch that holds elections. It’s the states. Congress has the power to overrule state provisions, but the President doesn’t.
@17,
“Congress has the power to overrule state provisions, but the President doesn’t.”
This naivete truly astonishes me. Your country has been dismantled, there will be no more free elections, it’s over man. Project2025, look it up. American exceptionalism seems to have made it impossible even for otherwise reasonable people to see what is happening.
Things are bad enough without having to make up paranoid bullshit. Insanity hinders effective response. Everybody, get a grip.
It appears that the provisions on contempt enforcement and AI violate the Byrd rule and will probably be stripped out of the Senate version, because they can’t be passed under Reconciliation rules.
@19,
“Things are bad enough without having to make up paranoid bullshit.”
You’re literally making my case for me. Sarah Kendzior predicted all this back in 2016. And Americans are still, “yeah nah can’t happen here, we have SCOTUS and Congress and our great constitution, no way we could turn fash.” All while you have turned fash.
“Turn fash”??
To John Watts and others:
Read what Robert Reich wrote in the Guardian.
@21 rorschach. I’m with you. See, also, Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here.”
Can we at least stop using Trump’s language? Call it Trump’s Big Shitty Bill or anything else.
Well, OK.
I don’t have a dog in this fight.
Other than my entire Boomer age existence any way.
Robert Reich is a former cabinet Secretary of Labor and a well known professor of economics at Berkeley. He knows what he is talking about and always worth paying attention to.
That is as far as I read.
The issue here seems to be that being able to ignore the Federal courts, means that Trump now has a blank check to do whatever he wants.
Whatever he wants includes canceling the next elections.
Who else is going to stop him?
So far, the US congress, ruled by the GOP hasn’t bothered to stop him and the US House is enabling him.
I’m sure they will try it.
The strategy of the GOP Fascists is to keep pushing until they fail.
If no one pushes back….bye bye democracy.
Not now; only when and if the Big Ugly Bill is passed with the contempt provision in it.
That would require all the state governments to go along with it. Why would they?
It’s Trump’s Enabling Act. Combined with a huge bribe to keep the ultra-rich onside. But even they should beware: if it’s passed, Trump can have any one of them transported to a torture dungeon abroad on a whim, and the courts will have no way to enforce any bleatings they care to emit against it.
Trump now – for a while actually – controls Congress. It’s now a rubber stamp that he will bully, dominate, get his way with and if need be ignore. He can do that.
Trump now – for a while actually – controls SCOTUS & the “Justice” (Legal) system. It’s now a rubber stamp that he will bully, dominate, get his way with and if need be ignore. He can do that.
Trump now – for a while actually – controls the military. It’s now his tool of brutal physical repression that he will bully, dominate, get his way with and use as he sees fit. He can do that.
Trump has no regard for Laws or the USoA Constitution. Or norms or conventions or basic human decency or ethics.
There was one chance. Just one of peacefully, democratically stopping him and the Facist takeover of the USA.
You had to stop him becoming POTUS by supporting and voting for Kamala Harris and the Democratic party.
Too many of you blew it.
So. You’ve lost.
You lost your Democracy.
Trump is now Dictator. Perhaps not yet officially but de facto. In effect, In reality.
Thanks Stein voters, thanks West voters, thanks those who didn’t vote, thanks Trump voters. Thanks Voter Suppression.
You are ALL now so very, very fucked. More than you know, more than you realise. Unforgivably so for all those responsible I’d say.
When you needed to fully unify behind and support the NON-fascist party to stop the Fascist party, you did not do so.
So you’ve – those listed people above – destroyed the United States of America as we’ve known it. Its lost now. Gone. Dead.
Worse, you have taken the rest of the planet down with you.
Because Climate, international laws, rise of global fascism and more
I don’t really have more words to say .. they’d be too dangerous, too unprintable anyway. Just go back to first sentence and re-read again and again until you fucking get it people.
Those who seemingly do not already get it here.
Why would they need all 50 states to go along? A few states would be enough to throw the election to the House where each state would get one vote and there are more state delegations controlled by the Republicans.
You cannot say we didn’t try to warn you. We did. We tried so fucking hard and in the end your willful stupidity has doomed us all.
John Harshman @20 made me think of the filibuster. If they can’t pass the bill under Reconciliation rules with the contempt business in it, then passing it means passing exactly what they get from the House which effectively takes 60 votes in favor. OTOH, it would take only a simple majority to suspend the filibuster rule; and the Republicans would certainly do that. Let’s see what happens…
And that folks is why I will always strive to hold those responsible like “beholder” ,. “Vicar”, et al accountable.
Why everyone else should do so too.
Prediction: There will be an election next year and Republicans will lose control of the House. No need to give up just yet. There is a reasonable degree of doom and gloom, but that is frequently exceeded here. Remember that Trump is evil, but he’s also an idiot, and he has lots of other evil idiots working for him.
Well, you could try crawling into the Capitol building.
The January 6 insurrectionists did a bad because of their goal, not necessarily because of their methods. Get in that frame of mind and there are plenty of possible ways to coerce our legislators into doing what you want.
If they are such idiots, why are the Dems loosing to them again and again? Either they are not or the Dems are just as bad.
“No taxes on tips! Bigger child tax credits!” Distraction for the rubes. Everything he does has a stupid silly distraction that people focus on and say yea. From the beginning, I’ve called his supporters the gullibles.
@36 Erlend Meyer. Bingo. In fact, I think the Dems are worse. The GOP is the disease, the Dems are the worse-than-quack doctors who pretend to be helping you, but they not only fail to cure the disease, they actively aid and abet it.
I posted a couple of links about Dem fecklessness in PZ’s recent post, The guiding principle of American news. You might want to check them out.
@SteveOR
“beholder” ,. “Vicar”, have little power. Obama, Clintons, Pelosi, etc., have tons–and misuse it at every turn.
Voter shaming is victim-blaming, and pointless. (If it worked, Harris would be president by a wide margin.) Try holding the people who sold our our democracy for enormous personal wealth – and who are currently NOT out fighting fascism in red states like Bernie and AOC – accountable instead.
“If they are such idiots, why are the Dems loosing to them again and again? Either they are not or the Dems are just as bad.”
Or the electorate (well, those who actually vote) actually, really, truly preferred the Republicans, thus their election win.
(I don’t get why people write as though the electorate did not matter and thus ignore it, focusing only on the parties)
hillaryrettig1 @39: You’re right – it’s silly to voter-shame. We don’t even know which states these people voted in. If they were solid red or blue states, it didn’t matter.
But they didn’t just vote one way or another. They repeatedly counselled progressives to not vote for Harris. In effect, they supported a Trump victory. For that, they deserve blame. There’s plenty of accountability to go around, including, but not limited to, Dem fecklessness.
Vox article: https://www.vox.com/politics/414370/2024-election-results-exit-polls-catalist
(Discussion and data for each in the article)
@42 John
Exit polls have a glaring sampling bias: they don’t ask the non-voters why they didn’t vote. If Joemala did indeed convince their base there was no point in choosing between two genocidal monsters (as was evidently the case, turnout plummeted), exit polls won’t tell you why that happened. They will only show that the remaining voters tend somewhat to be people who voted for the winner.
You imagined those were exit polls, beholder? Tsk.
Yet another article I’ve adduced that you did not care to bother to peruse, obs.
Anyway, not my data, not my conclusion. Not my facts! ;)
Dismiss it all you want on whatever specious basis you choose, but I get it’s because it utterly contradicts your stance, not because you have a warrant.
I also like how, whenever you make checkable claims, they are wank.
e.g.
In fact, https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-voter-turnout-republicans-trump-harris-7ef18c115c8e1e76210820e0146bc3a5
(It’s a case of reversion to the mean, not “plummeting”)
Note that Trump is already defying court orders, and as far as I know no one has done anything about it.
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
– H. L. Mencken
My fear (growing toward “expectation”) is that either 2026 or 2028 will see an attempt by the executive branch of the federal government to cancel the elections due to the ongoing “emergency”. But, as has been said above, the states run the elections–so some states will cancel (primarily red states following their anointed one) and some states will hold elections as always.
If it is 2026, then we have a minor constitutional crisis of trying to seat the newly elected Congresspeople AND remove those whose terms ended and did not get re-elected.
If it is 2028, then we have the constitutional crisis above plus trying to sort out the electoral college. Winning the electoral vote requires “a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed”–it’s arguable that if a given state doesn’t send electors, then they aren’t part of the count and it would take less than 270 votes to win. And then the additional fun of getting the current administration to leave as the Constitution is clear on when the term ends–and it isn’t when the new President is sworn in.
“it’s arguable that if a given state doesn’t send electors, then they aren’t part of the count and it would take less than 270 votes to win.”
Arguable? There’s an actual example in the election of 1864.
Snopes specifically looked at the image in OP.
Snopes was the only fact-checker I could find talking about it. Otherwise just randos pointing out they couldn’t find passages either.
[meta]
Well, maybe PZ is testing his commentariat.
I hope.
(First thing to notice is that there is no attribution)
@39. hillaryrettig1 :
Voters aren’t victims. They’re people making their choices. Vicar, beholder and the rest of the Purity Disunity mob who thought the Democrats weren’t good enough so they’d instead argue for and support and vote for the Leopards Eating Peoples Faces party deserve everything they get now. They deserve their metaphorical faces being eating by the metaphorical leopards they unleashed upon the rest of us.
Those who couldn’t vote, those in the rest of the world or who had their votes suppressed were victims.
Kamala Harris, like HRC the other woman to run for POTUS (hmm.. bit of a pattern being formed here huh?) were victims of the wilful stupidity of too many voters like them and of the utterly vile Stein and West who should NOT have run and should have thrown their support entirely behind Kamala Harris and told their fans to do likewise IF they actually gave a toss about the progressive ideas they claim to believe in and didn’t want to be fascist stooges and enablers which they effectively were.
When the future of Democracy and the planet was at stake – and it was – this was NOT the time to fuck around and fuck up the choice between NON-Fascist and Fascist.
Stein, West & their voters in practice, in effect, de facto voted Fash. That is forever on them and they deserve to be called out and condemned for it every time. What part of this exactly do you think is wrong?
Especially for toxic shoe-scrapings like beholder that made the deliberate effort to argue against the democratic party – the Non-Fascist party – in just about every thread pre-election thereby obvs helping the Fascists who were the ONLY actual alternative.
Change the system? Sure! Criticise Democrats? Okay. But time and place and circumstances and helping the actual fascists into power? Fuck no!
IMFG I am getting tired of this BS crap of, “This must have been what the voters wanted.” Here is an example of why this is bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNQkZ-q13Y
The key here is not the majority of the fact in the video clip, in which she changes her mind, and stops voting Republican, its the fact that before she got the facts she had bought into the bullshit of the GOP, and had she not personally experienced reality, and realized she had been lied to by them for years, she would likely still be voting for them today. And, this was clear back in the 1960s. They have had, by Zod, almost 100 F-ING more years since then to continually lie to the public about these things, and convince people (and I see this crap over and over even from here), that they should never engage with the other side, try to convince them they are wrong, etc. That they are just “too far gone” to reach. Never mind the fact that she explicitly points out that it was the fact that the left was “so normal, and kind, and not complete assholes, who hated everyone on the right so much they won’t talk to them”, that allowed her to figure out she was wrong for falling for all the right wing bullshit.
We get people here spouting what is literally right wing talking points – “Both sides are bad.” Yeah, maybe, to some extent, but sometimes reality is f-ing complicated, and there is no way in hell Kamala would have done worse with the mess in Gaza than Trump has, for example, regardless of the simplistic view pushed about her positions on it. She might have been capable of having her mind changed on some crap, if for no other reason than she isn’t a complete flipping sociopath, like Trump (and imho, way to many around him). But, nope, instead we played stupid games, and won stupid prizes. And, yeah, one of those games, sadly, really is the Dems trusting process, while somehow being oblivious that the right has been pushing bullshit for nearly 100 years, and doubling down on it, over and over, and over, while doing a piss poor job of effectively addressing any of it. How should they have? Oh, I don’t know, by being just as aggressive with the truth as the right has been with endless lies, maybe… Instead its been a slow decline into, “Well, we need to work with these people somehow, so lets give them an inch.”
And, yeah, that leads to corrupting your own ideals, and slipping into a stupid practice of accommodation. Why? Because none of them wanted to do what several of them have done, and been actually attacked for recently – go into the spaces of the right wing, and actually f-ing talk to people. No, instead we, and the Democrat politicians, self isolate, stop talking to the other side at all, outside of debates (which tend to be useless theater), and the right gets to keep spreading lies, far and wide, without any pushback at all. And, this has only gotten worse, because now you can spread them instantly, in massive amounts, minute by minute, over the internet, and everyone is huddling in “safe spaces” for which ever side they are on, and no one is talking to each other at all (and, even if they try, the dishonest ones, i.e. the right wingers, can just delete what ever you said, and ban your account). But, lets not ever talk to anyone face to face either, that might be “dangerous”, or just annoying, or a waste of time, so.. again, no one freaking talks to each other, and all anyone gets is the crap already coming from their own side – and, as exemplified here, half of that crap is, “We hate our own politicians (maybe for good reasons, sometimes, but not always), and its someone else’s fault this isn’t being fixed, not mine!.” Well… isn’t that flipping convenient…
Professor Myers,
A word of caution that is directly relevant to the problem we are all facing with an uninformed electorate and the prevalence and negative impact of false information:
We all need to be more careful when reposting information that was not properly verified.
In this case, the claim that the bill allows Trump to “delay or cancel elections” does not seem to be supported by the text of the bill: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-big-beautiful-cancel-elections/
The fact that even a trained scientist and lifelong critical thinker (I am also in this category btw) can unknowingly participate in spreading false information that seems credible to them (for various reasons that I’m sure you’re aware of, including plain old confirmation bias) speaks to both the power of such memes to spread as well as the challenge in doing something to minimize or prevent them from spreading.
Because they are a cancer to our society that has metastasized, potentially beyond control at this point.
So please, exercise caution, lead by example, and in doing so prove that we all have a role to play in combating this disease, some more than others.
@beholder #43
Assuming that there will be elections going forward, what have you been doing to secure better candidates? Perhaps you remember how I said that the work to get better options start years before the elections?
Are you trying to position any candidates for the mid-terms? Have you vetted any candidates for the presidential election? Have you done anything other than complaining and finger-pointing? All in all, what have you done to try to avoid being in exactly the same position as you were before and that you’re still complaining about?
I know I’m being snarky, but I’m also genuinely curious if you’re really trying. Please let me know.
I couldn’t quite find the exact post I had in mind, but I did come across one making a similar point.
So, how are things going with getting a third party up and running? It’s been more than a year, so what have you been doing?
It raises Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding by 365% for detention, 500% for deportations
So, is Trump counting on enough people crossing in to the USA to replace all these workers the US Gov’t seems to want to deport? Otherwise, a lot of essential industries are in trouble.
They want peons, not mere itinerant workers, jrkrideau.
cf. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/farmworkers-h-2a-trump-agriculture
@45. robro : “Note that Trump is already defying court orders, and as far as I know no one has done anything about it.”
Truth. Quoted for truth.
Trump now
thinksknows he is above the law. Now thanks to last election result Trump is the law. Constitution, Congress, Judicial rulings, etc..? So much empty paper now. He’s attacking Repug appointed “Justices” as “radical leftists ableist slur”, etc.. The USA has lost the rule of law and Trump will never be held legally responsible whilst he is POTUS and his regime rules.@43. beholder : Note even now you keep attacking the wrong side. Why it’s just like you actually support Trumpism and Fascism in fact using a very thin facade of faux “extremist progressivism. Oh wait. You do and have.
You also sound quite a lot like an agent provateur. This public easily accessible to all blog is not the place to encourage violence esp now. If violence does erupt you can be sure the other side led by Far Worse Genocide Don* – who was l aways obviously the more genocidal, cruel;, and mentally incompetent of the two candidates – will be ready for it as it is and will use it as an excuse to maybe declare martial law & take other repressive measures.
Also anyone else notice dhow quiet beholder has been about Gaza since Trump became POTUS. Its like he didn’t actually care about it at all & it was always just a pretext for attacking the Non=-Fascist party isn’t it?
@55. LykeX : Thanks for linking that old pre-election thread – so many examples there of what beholder (& Vicar) were doing pre-election and their refusal to answer questions, face the reality of the alternative being far – astronomically far worse, etc..
.* Trump was always obviously the more genocidal, cruel, and mentally incompetent of the two candidates
^ (Meta) Forgot that Dhows are things – specifically aptly SWAsian boats :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhow
Didn’t expect one to sail in via the Typos route.
For crying out loud!
The people behind this are genuinely evil. Have you not heard of Plausible Deniability?
This bill might not explicitly mention Trump cancelling elections, having random individuals killed on his say-so, or anything similar. But it quite clearly outlines a mechanism by which he could do those things, and no-one would be able to stop him.
You used to think there was simply no way anyone would ever try to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But they did. And if you aren’t careful, they will be overturning “settled” matters like Brown vs. Board of Education or the fourteenth amendment.
The real crisis is that the “checks and balances” have turned out to be purely ceremonial; powered by nothing but politeness and a sense of fair play. And now a bunch of criminals have stormed in, and begun drinking all the liquor, eating all the food, pocketing anything they think is valuable and smashing up the rest for fun; while you can only stand there like a rabbit in the headlights, wondering why the good guys aren’t coming to your rescue.
“This bill might not explicitly mention Trump cancelling elections, having random individuals killed on his say-so, or anything similar. But it quite clearly outlines a mechanism by which he could do those things, and no-one would be able to stop him.”
It is clear to you, then.
Can you elucidate this particular mechanism to which you refer with any degree of specificity?
The mechanistic outline?
(‘Cos it sure seems like you’re just vibing it)
—
Nah. That’s the norms and character side of things; the actual checks and balances remain, they’re just not being implemented.
There is still a judiciary, there is still congress.
(That they are tacitly allowing Trump do do his thing does not mean they could not actually exert their authority)
@ ^ John Morales : Theoretically they could but everyone knows that they won’t – espeially after Trump’s congressional impeachment trials and the dropping of alllegalcases against him.
The ancient Roman Senate theoretically ruled when Tiberius and at least the Julio-Claudian dynasty :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_dynasty
were in charge of the Roman
RepublicEmpire too. Theory is one thing, practice is another.Congress and the Judiciary still exist -yes.
But effectively they’ve been declawed.. Rendered impotent and useless. Powerless in practice abiet officially key rulers e.g. the Aussie GG.