Hey, y’all remember when Game of Thrones was a hot show? It had dragons, and zombies, and bloody destructive wars, and gratuitous nudity, and engaging characters, and multiple plot lines that were plummeting forward. Must-see TV, with gigantic budgets!
And then the last season comes along, it’s hot garbage, it betrays all the premises of the previous seasons, closes plot lines with idiot finality and illogical resolutions, and everyone realizes…maybe it was all shallow pretense all along, a series of excuses to justify the next slam-bang event in a long chain of them, and all interest in repeat viewing dissipates, and the show is only remembered as an embarrassment, because of that horrible conclusion.
I am reminded today of another long-running serial that started with grand ideals (FREEDOM!), had heroic battles, vivid, memorable characters, a vast landscape of spectacular scenery, beautiful dreams of a progressive society, and then it ends with a squalid little fart. We discover it was all a lie. We should have known. We started with a fantasy of equality and freedom composed by a team of rich landowners who made sure that the little people would never break their grip on power. We announced that the central theme of this great endeavor was liberty, while postponing emancipation of the horde of slaves we held, and taking over all that beautiful land by genocide of the people already living there.
And now, on the verge of our 250th anniversary, we have put the reins of power in the hands of a babbling loon who wants to deport anyone with a skin color less pasty than his own, who has just passed a bill that slashes the social safety net and enriches millionaires even more, all while his allies shred education and science in this country.
The “one big, beautiful bill”, as Trump calls it, won final approval by the House of Representatives on Thursday, in time for his signature on 4 July, the US Independence Day holiday. In addition to the tax cuts, it will also channel tens of billions in dollars towards immigration enforcement and building a wall along the Mexican border.
To cut costs, Republicans included provisions to end green energy incentives created under Joe Biden, but the bulk of the savings will come from changes to two programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps low-income Americans afford food.
Both programs will face new and stricter work requirements, and states will be forced to share part of the cost of Snap for the first time ever. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill’s Medicaid changes could cost as many as 11.8 million people their healthcare, and the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts about 8 million people, or one in five recipients, may lose their Snap benefits.
Look at those chucklefucks cackling over their evil laws
And of course Trump capped it all off with an anti-semitic slur in his victory speech.
TRUMP: No estate tax, no going through the banks and borrowing from—in some cases a fine banker— and in some cases a shylocks and bad people. pic.twitter.com/VHQt3k1U6u
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 4, 2025
I’m sorry, but the finale of this series really sucks. Can I cancel my subscription? Get my money back? I would never have started watching if I’d known how badly the writers and show-runners were going to botch it in the conclusion.
To be fair, we stole some of our land by wars of conquest.
San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento have Spanish names for a historical reason.
We got a huge amount of the current USA in the Mexican American war.
We also got Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain in the Spanish American war.
So, what is up for grabs next?
The current regime is looking at Canada, Panama, and/or Greenland.
They’re using our taxes to promote propaganda. I received an email from Social Security last night touting the bill. First, I don’t believe it…their last tax cut cost me thousands of dollars in taxes. I don’t want it if it’s true. I would rather take care of the kind of things that they are killing like the environment, kids, veterans, basic science research, educating people, etc.
There is a lot to dislike about the recently passed finance bill.
One of the worst is the massive increase in the budget for the secret police, ICE.
They raised the ICE budget by 10X to $170 billion total.
This is a huge amount of money for a secret police force. ICE already had a huge budget.
This makes the USA into a police state.
and
So who are the US Gestapo going to round up?
I’m sure it won’t be just non-US citizens.
Already they have arrested US citizens including elected officials.
They might end up coming for you and me some day.
This is going to put a lot of stress on our society. Which is already getting wrecked.
In Gaspacho news, the all time favorite police rousting charge, “resisting arrest,” has been replace with “interference of a law enforcement activity” to arrest US citizens during ICE raids. I don’t know if anyone has been prosecuted on this bogus federal charge, but people are being shoved into unmarked vans, citizen or not, and whisked away.
And in science news, and I don’t have the exact details, but the essence is that the NIH has canceled the Springer Nature subscription for the government because Nature publishes “junk science.” The war on science is in full swing but at least now we can say Merry Christmas.
Huh. I love Game of Thrones.
What premises are those? That leaders almost invariably do bad/stupid things, even when they start with the best of intentions? No betrayal there. Things were wrapped up a bit precipitously (kinda like Babylon 5); I reckon Benioff and Weiss got bored.
@3, raven —
I agree with your assessment. Once ICE can no longer find enough undocumented brown people to justify its existence, who will it set its sights on next? If there’s another massive anti-Trump protest like the No Kings, will they arrest protesters simply for exercising their First Amendment rights? They could call it un-American activity. Or, what about people like myself who were born overseas to American parents? If I speak out, will I be investigated or threatened with denaturalization, even though I was never naturalized? We know Trump and his lapdog SCOTUS can twist the laws to fit whatever they want them to say.
Most people don’t realize just how much $170 billion is. It’s enough to fund a first class army and navy. It’s a greater expenditure than all but the USA and China spend on their armed forces. Russia only spends $150 billion on its military, even counting its war against Ukraine. It’s a truly obscene amount when you consider we’re cutting health insurance to 18 million low income people. It’s a terrifying amount. How many ICE agents does the USA need? A million?
Not only is the US Game of Thrones, it is LOST…
@robro #2, I also got that same email from Social Security last night.
@raven #3, ICE becoming the US Gestapo is my fear too.
I too got the SSA email “Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors” about Trump’s BBB.. I have also seen on the internet, that BBB will force cuts in Medicare, not “just” Medicaid. The reason being that BBB creates a huge deficit and various balenced budget laws will mandate compensating cuts which will almost certainly involve Medicare. I don’t know if it’s true/reasonable but considering all the “we won’t touch” lies we have already been told, I expect it is.
A funeral seems more fitting than a celebration. You have my sympathies, who could have thought we were in the bad timeline?
I personally thought “Game of Thrones” ended much better than a lot of Marvel movies did. For starters, I really appreciated having the big apocalyptic world-at-stake battle against the zombie army happen midseason, not in the very last episode. That meant that the rest of the season could be spent dealing with believable, human-scale conflicts among characters who were, for the most part, sympathetic and relatable in very different (and conflicting) ways. Hell, I’ll be happy if I live to see the American experiment end in a similar way (‘cuz right now it’s looking like Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsey Bolton giving everything to the Night King and pretending it’s the best deal anyone could have got).
And what the fuck is this “no going through the banks” shit? What does that have to do with keeping or ditching the estate tax? Is he setting us up for a “final solution” to all the national debt Republicans have racked up? “The Joos killed Christ so we’re not gonna pay back any Joo bankers?”
Next, the ADL, the sole arbiter of what is our isn’t antisemitism, is going to deny what Israel’s sugar daddy said as being derogatory against Jews.
Kind of lays bare the lie behind “antisemitism” as the excuse for attempting to bring universities to heel. Not that we didn’t already know that, and not that anyone will care.
There was a time (9 years ago) when that Social Security Administration email would have been a front-page scandal. Now no one notices.
I got that infamous bill, too. My first thought is, ‘HAVE THEY LOST THEIR MINDS?!” But since the US Departments don’t send out such things like that, I came to the conclusion that this is the work of a Russian Troll Farm rather than an actual US department.
And I believe that this is such a case right here.
July 4th celebration is officially cancelled!
I would like to remind you that status quo – the thing the Democratic leaders want to preserve at any cost- has ceased to exist.
.
A believable challenge to the new fascism will require a brand new deal, an ambitious program to start over. This rules out the 33- year- old Clinton/Biden centrist faction as credible leaders. They cannot offer hope to the demographic that has seen their standard of living stagnate.
.
Also… both Obama and wossname the Attorney General under Biden lacked the will to go after the crooks of the previous administrations. The next administration has to go after the criminals like they did in Brazil.
And if that means increasing the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 judges (with four new ones) so be it. Fuck the craven Democrats. Primary all the ones that lack the conviction to do what is needed.
#16.
This is why I prefer to be an independent voter, going neutral, siding with no political party for a change because the Dems are just as bad as the Repubs. Although, I admittedly side with the Dems a lot of times, due to their work in making this nation a much better place to live… if only they have the guts to do more instead of being lazy and loaf around.
The comparison to games of thrones is correct but PZ fucked up the episodes. We are in the part when Joffery Baratheon (DJT) has become the king and we are moving very fast towards the end when the white walkers (the global warming) is gonna fuck us hard, despite a lot of people giving a lot of advance warning yet people in charge doing absolutely nothing.
@2 Spoiler: most Americans already didn’t pay taxes on their Social Security because most of the taxable SS falls below the deduction amount
Single: $14,600
Married Filing Jointly: $29,200
Married Filing Separately: $14,600
Head of Household: $21,900
Qualifying Surviving Spouse: $29,200
From Investopedia
https://www.investopedia.com/average-social-security-benefit-for-65-year-olds-8773777
So, if you are married and retired, your total Social Security average income for the year is $38,184.00. Subtract $29,200.00 and you are left with $8,984.00 in taxable income. BUT using the link below, 50% of the total $38,184.00 is $19,092.00, which is less than the $32,00.00 cutoff for having ANY taxable Social Security income.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/n703.pdf
For anyone who really wants to go through the whole calculation for taxable Social Security income, here it is:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p915.pdf
TL,DR the big beautiful ball of bullshit literally does nothing for you. You are literally getting nothing that you weren’t already getting.
But that Medicaid you were getting for the really expensive healthcare that you couldn’t otherwise afford? That’s gone, baby, gone.
From The Guardian link
I can’t wait to see what kind of Dickensian work requirements there will be for 8 year olds so they qualify for SNAP and free school lunches.
Wait, you say you’re 78 and getting SNAP benefits because $38,184.00 isn’t really cutting it for two people? Surprise, now there are mandated work requirements in order to qualify! GET A JOB WELFARE QUEEN, IF YOU WANT TO EAT. /s
The red states can pretty much kiss their federal benefits goodbye, given that red states usually choose to forego the federal benefits because of the matching funds requirement. Either that, or your low-tax red state taxes are going to get a lot higher in a hurry. Exhibit A: the Affordable Care Act, in which states were required to pay into the system for their residents to be able to get Obamacare. Sure, red state residents can go through the federal ACA site but the health benefits and options aren’t nearly as good as the blue states. Anybody remember the “good old days” when MalWarts was busy draining all the state social services dry with their shitty business model of paying employees the minimum they could get away with and making virtually all employees part time so they didn’t have to pay benefits?
Spoiler, Mike; that’s how the bulk of people spend their time, including the ones at work, usually while they are ostensibly working. Hell, if you are bored enough, you can always tune into C-SPAN and see the Congress critters playing with their phones during the broadcast assemblies.
For all the slope-browed, knuckle-walking mouthbreathers, who voted the orange asshole in along with his Republican flying monkeys, HAVE THE LEGISLATION YOU VOTED FOR.
Welcome to the Hobbsian future where your life is nasty, brutish and short.
@ 16
Typical Liberals: “No! No! We can get the status quo back with love, and flowers, and voting harder, and kittens, and bipartisanship, and friendship, and tossing trans people under the bus, and rainbows, and ignoring the genocide in Gaza… Did I mention the kittens?”
@12
Currently, banks are regulated by federal law by how much interest they can charge, the terms of the loans, etc.
Shitty payday loans, mortgage brokers, etc are in no way similarly constrained. Banks won’t give you a loan? You will be nudged and prodded to online loans/banks/financial institutions that have little or no regulation. You will only find out how deeply fucked you are AFTER you sign, because disclosure requirements will be minimal if they even exist at all.
It means the orange shitgibbon wants to force everyone to have to deal with what are effectively legalized loan sharks.
Do try to keep up your credit rating because you are otherwise fucked if you don’t. /s
As far as the estate tax goes, only millionaires and billionaires were paying it and even then, most of them weren’t paying due to estate planning and generous tax dodges/loopholes. (The ones DOGE somehow seemed to miss in their chainsaw cost cutting mission to “cut waste, fraud and abuse”.) If a parent leaves a house or other real estate to their children, there is something like 250 million deduction per person before any of that is taxable. Or, if the parent in question did some estate planning and say, put their home in a family trust fund, then none of it is taxable. The “death tax” ie., the estate tax was never a thing that most Americans ever had to worry about. But it is a great sound bite for red state morons who can’t be bothered to read or learn anything and think that they are just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires who will be rich when their day trading or other financial mirage finally pays off.
@20 You nailed it. There is no FDR in the ranks.
@2
… off a cliff.
silvrhalide @ #19 — “…most Americans already didn’t pay taxes on their Social Security because most of the taxable SS falls below the deduction amount.” That may be true, but I suspect a significant number of Americans on Social Security are still working and paying taxes on their Social Security. In may case I kept working in part because my wife wasn’t eligible for Medicare until this year and our son is one of those “on the spectrum” young people who is only now finding something he likes to do well enough to earn money. We might have been able to get him on Medicaid or some other assistance but he essentially refused. That said, I suspect that the amount of savings from not taxing my Social Security will be offset by other losses of services to al of us, not to mention the impact on people in dire circumstances.
@23 Approximately 60% of retirees are living off of Social Security alone. How, I can’t begin to fathom.
Most Americans collecting Social Security are still working because nobody in their right mind can afford to retire on SS income alone. Plenty of the the retirees mentioned above have been forced into retirement are either living on the bare edge of existence or else have moved in with their kids, other relatives, etc. The 3 generation household is becoming increasingly common.
Sure, there are some Americans who can afford to retire, because they have investments, 401k’s, IRAs, etc. They are very much a minority. Even then, the bulk of their taxes aren’t coming from Social Security income, they are being taxed on other income, such as IRA, pension (for those who actually have them), 401k income, etc. Click on the link I provided and you will see that at best, you are only being taxed on half of the Social Security income. The only thing the big beautiful bolus of BS is doing is allowing wealthy people to pay less in taxes, because the working class and poor retirees were already not paying taxes or else paying minimal taxes. Believe me when I tell you that few hundred dollars they are no longer paying will disappear in a heartbeat when their Medicaid benefits disappear. Yes, if you live long enough, you will be on Medicaid, even if you qualify for Medicare, because the end of life bills are so high and are largely not covered adequately by Medicare. But not anymore.
I know how because those are the people I see where I volunteer.
A senior and disabled program. Most are both.
Almost all of them are living on just Social Security.
They live in public subsidized housing which is 30% of their income.
Eligible for Food Stamps i.e SNAP.
Medicare and sometimes Medicaid as well.
None of them have cars because they can’t afford them and car insurance.
It’s not a great existence but not all that bad either.
They make lives that work for them.
For a lot of them it was a huge step up.
A lot of them have a previous history of…living on the streets or in their cars as part of the homeless population.
Guys, I’ve just check my SSA account and discover that I, myself is on the SSA mailing list which I left alone as it is. Especially since the option on the preference page reads,
“We’ll notify you through your preferred notification method when a new message is available in my Social Security Message Center. When there is a new Message in my Message Center Inbox, I want to be notified by: Email”
No such email I saw this morning was ever found in my SSA message inbox. So therefore, I have no words to say other than America is being needlessly highly upset over a fully 100% fake email coming from a fake address made up to deceptively look at an actual email address from SSA!
In other words, America is upset over nothing!
@26
Environmental protection laws gutted, science agencies and programs gutted, Medicaid and SNAP gutted and you think America–at least the thinking part of it–is upset over nothing?
@25 Well once the big beautiful ball of BS goes into effect, chances are that most of them will be right back on the street.
Don’t worry, there will be a lot of single parents and kids and disenfranchised teenagers right along with them. So they’ll have lots of company.
To those questioning the authenticity of the email from SSA, I too wondered if it might be a scam so I went to the Social Security Admin website…not from a link in the email…and found this “Press Release” from the SSA Press Office: Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors. Looks pretty authentic to me
To those questioning the authenticity of the email from SSA, I too wondered if it might be a scam so I went to the Social Security Admin website…not from a link in the email…and found this “Press Release” from the SSA Press Office: Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors. Looks pretty authentic to me
Sums up this 4th of July.
As many have noticed, we live in a world where the Onion is more accurate than the Mainstream Media.
If the fascist GOP gets their way, this will be the last real 4th of July.
Fb meme seen the other day :
Some of course deserve it less than others..
raven: “If the fascist GOP gets their way, this will be the last real 4th of July.”
You posted that on the 5th of July, so it follows that the next 4th of July in 2026 shall be the last real one, conditionally.
(Which means yesterday’s was real)
—
StevoR: “Some of course deserve it less than others.”
How many Americas are there? Only one. Silly FB!
(You do get it’s a demonym for the USA, no? I know every other country in the Americas is also American, technically, but there’s only one USA. The United States of Mexico, for example, is not American in normal parlance)
An irrelevant aside: I watched the first couple of episodes of Game of Thrones, and it struck me as little more than adolescent fantasy, with cartoon characters and simplistic plots. No wonder Americans loved it….
@ 26: “Owosso Harpist” might sound better in their native language. As for the SSA email, I got it, and the MSM has been reporting on it since yesterday. What is not made clear in the email is that anyone over age 65 who meets the income parameters will be eligible for this new deduction, WHETHER OR NOT THEY COLLECT SOCIAL SECURITY. The deduction has nothing to do with Social Security.
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/05/social-security-administration-email-trump-tax-bill
— extract —
‘Blatant misinformation’: Social Security Administration email praising Trump’s tax bill blasted as a ‘lie’
An email sent by the US Social Security Administration (SSA) that claims Donald Trump’s major new spending bill has eliminated taxes on benefits for most recipients is misleading, critics have said.
The reconciliation bill – which the president called the “one big, beautiful bill” before signing it on Friday after Republicans in Congress passed it – includes provisions that will strip people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, kill off clean energy development and raise the national debt by trillions of dollars.
But the bill also “eliminates federal income taxes on social security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples”, the previously apolitical SSA stated in an email circulated on Thursday.
[…]
However, the spending bill does not actually eliminate federal taxes on social security due to the rule constraints of passing a bill this way – through the reconciliation process, to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
Instead, the legislation provides a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for people aged 65 and older, and $12,000 for married seniors. These benefits will start to phase out for those with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples of more than $150,000 a year.
davetaylor, I tried to watch the first episode, but it was too boring after the first few minutes.
And kinda predictable. Not that I remember anything much about it, but back in the day (decades ago) I tried to read the (first) book, too, and gave up about half-way through. Turgidity incarnate. A cast of thousands, too, not my thing.
—
Re PZ’s perception (“And then the last season comes along, it’s hot garbage, it betrays all the premises of the previous seasons, closes plot lines with idiot finality and illogical resolutions, and everyone realizes…maybe it was all shallow pretense all along, a series of excuses to justify the next slam-bang event in a long chain of them, and all interest in repeat viewing dissipates, and the show is only remembered as an embarrassment, because of that horrible conclusion.”)
The reason being the scriptwriters took over when they had covered all the stuff in the books:
“As the seasons progressed, due to lack of new material from the books the show became less character-driven and more reliant on big twists and spectacle.[280] The show’s final two seasons, especially season eight, received more criticism.”
(Wikipedia)
silvrhalide@#19:
Like, say, the way that Donald Trump got lots of money from his father in the form of ‘business loans’, which weren’t taxed as they were loans, and then he didn’t bother to repay them, which meant his father could claim tax deductions from the losses.
Yes, Trump definitely knows about ways to get around paying estate taxes. And as you say, it’s not as if people who weren’t already rich had to actually deal with them. This is one of those places where the old line about ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ really comes in to bite people, and the American Dream is exposed for the propaganda that it is. If people really understood that the likelihood of 99% them ever having to worry about estate taxes was pretty much nil, things might be different.