308 Comments

We might be able to build your ideal political world if we can 1) stop the Republican disenfranchise campaign, 2) add Democrats to the Senate (e.g., make DC a state), and 3) pack the courts, including the SC, with progressives. These are achievable goals. I'd do 2) on day one of the next Democratic Senate, then 3), and let the lawsuits take care of 1).

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I thought about this, and I decided that distance works.

Let’s conclude that one trillion of anything is a fuckton—metric or Imperial.

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Too old - word is Baby Gaetz only likes them before they're old enough to vote.It is weirdly convenient timing for a long-time bachelor to find himself a wife right after people started asking questions about his secret son, though.

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Does he even know that payroll taxes fund these things?

If he doesn't know, don't point it to him. Never tell a politician about a source of cash he isn't aware of. Especially when the politician's name is Trump.

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In addition, for most people, it's always the other people who are lazy and want to stay home on government's subsidies.The initial message has too much resonance to be countered by merely saying "eh, Trump thinks you are lazy". Trump was not talking about them, but about the guy or lady next door.

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Fortunately/unfortunately I believe we are already too calcified in our political beliefs for this and all the other crazyass shit he will do for the next few months to have any effect. There can’t possibly be anyone undecided at this point. Normal people will roll their eyes and get on with their lives, and hopefully vote in November. His cultists will drink in the piss he’s pouring on their heads and know it is the sweetest, freshest rainwater ever.

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Ta, Robyn.

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Dems need not rush into suing him just yet. Let it play out a couple of weeks. Once people realize they aren't actually getting any money, it'll be much harder to blame dems for it.

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That's not how propaganda works.

It also does not matter one bit if he is sued to stop his illegal overreach to stop him from trying to implement illegal EOs or they are stopped because no one acts on them because they are illegal overreach and not worth the paper they are printed on.

What matters is the money will not go out and it will be the Dems fault. This is how spin, propaganda, and PR like this work.

This is about depressing the vote of the fence sitters. the GOPers who might be willing to vote for a Dem, and all the other groups that are not really Dem voters. This is about energizing his base so they can go on about how Trump wanted to help and the mean, evil Dems stopped him just because they hate him more than they love America.

Yes, it's crude propaganda. But it works,

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Hopefully vote in November.

That's the key right there.

This is not about shifting voters. This is about getting people to the polls. This is about energizing his base and depressing the opposition. This is about manipulating enthusiasm and morale.

It's the same thing the Lincoln Project is doing.

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Just received my confirmation of enrollment from SSA yesterday. My payments begin this month. WOOT!

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I think these EOs are going to backfire (at least I hope) — there will be no meaningful relief for anyone, but now Trump has assumed full ownership of the problem with this stupid and unworkable "plan" and the fallout will be his (and the GOP's) alone. That's it's also cutting Social Security and Medicare is extra stupid.

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THIS!

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I'm no economist. But I figure even outside the crisis that is the virus, vastly increasing so-called 'entitlements' and pulling money from the richest of the rich especially would probably benefit the US economy, enormously. And probably quite a few other ones where wealth and income concentration is becoming positively pathological.

The reason? So much wealth is concentrated in so very few hands, in enormous, concentrated pools. Billionaires don't need to spend, certainly not at anything like the rate their money is itself making more money. That wealth gets siphoned out of the system, locked up, much of it doing little but looking impressive in theory. Sure, if they took it, started major industries, some of it would wind back in circulation. But it's mostly just ballast for the economy. Pretty much whatever you're doing, now, you work, everybody works to add zeroes no one needs in places there are already plenty of them. What function do these enormous pools of money perform? At concentrations like they're reaching, nada.

Spread that around, especially into programs that increase other people's productivity and earning power--like education--you get a better world, more business for everybody, because more people in the economy, not so much living food stamp to food stamp. And even just taking people off the street, reducing the social deficits homelessness and poverty in general incur--that's going to make a saner, safer, happier world. And a healthier, more robust economy.

I suspect, for many reasons beyond even that, It's quite the inverse of the nonsense the asshole right parrots, that programs that keep people productive and safe and happy are somehow 'disincentives'. You want to talk disincentives to work, talk about the danger in the workplace, the sense you get that the game is hopelessly rigged, and no way to get ahead if you don't have a billion dollars to bribe a Republican senator. A society where people feel there's real mobility, we're really all in this together, and no one falls so far it's hopeless mostly just because they were born near the bottom to begin with and no way to move up, it's probably better all 'round. More money flowing, more work for everybody. What you're getting lots of places, with the cancer that is increasing wealth for the one percent, is a bullshit banana republic of a society

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