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July 03, 2025 07:23 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 30 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

–Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Comments

30 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread

    1. This bill demonstrates that the morally, ethically and intellectually bankrupt Trump party wants to turn our nation into a giant prison camp. Institutionalizing bribery and extortion (pay to play government) for businesses and wealthy individuals buying favors to get around laws that are only enforced against the unfavored. Further tearing down guardrails that protect our citizens from government abuse, we become a police state with petty corruption as part of our daily lives. With medical, scientific and academic research cancelled or corrupted we will be entering a new Dark Age ruled by fear, ignorance and bigotry. All to serve the King and the Oligarchs who, like in the 1930s, thought they could tame the beast. But as Russia's oligarchs have learned (and Elon Musk), they too serve at the pleasure of the Master.

    2. The ghost of Marie Antoinette was on C-SPAN last night, only to say "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche et meurent," or translated into American "Let them eat cake and die!" 

      1. French phooey hooey, try to remember this is T****muricah, huh doc? . . .

        . . . “Let ’em eat 1%er tax cuts!!!”

        Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I’ll piss on ’em
        That’s what the Statue of Bigotry says
        Your poor huddled masses
        Let’s club ’em to death
        And get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard

    3. Good fascist lickspittle.  Time to shine those jackboots and swastika pins.  As for being godless, well, I'm okay with being enlightened and not afraid of a mythical sky daddy.  But you do you like a good lil christofascist.  

        1. If you are going to throw out sizeable claims about death … one of the debate rounds I judged this past year had a pretty well-sourced bit of evidence countering that "communism is bad because deaths" idea: 

          Estimates suggest that capitalism may be responsible for over 10 million excess deaths annually due to factors like poverty, healthcare inequality, and environmental destruction.

          10 million a year … would pretty quickly overwhelm 20 million killed by communism. 

        2. Trump killed a few hundred thousand by bungling COVID.  And fascism is what killed the Russians in WWII for the most part.  But do go on, glamorous goebbels

    4. Impacts didn't take long … Rural southwest Nebraska clinic closes, blaming expected Medicaid cuts

      “Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Community Hospital CEO Troy Bruntz said in a statement.

      The clinic will wind down its services over the coming months.

  1. The legislation would funnel over $150 billion towards Trump's border policies and immigration crackdowns, with the ICE detention budget alone ballooning from $3.4 billion to $45 billion until the end of 2029. Professor Donald Moynihan of the University of Michigan has pointed out that this figure is more than the combined funding for all 50 federal prisons.

    In addition to being a gross waste of taxpayer money, this funding will create a self-perpetrating deportation industrial machine similar to our private prison system and military complex. Just like pouring money into military contractors incentivizes new wars, pouring money into this fledgling deportation industry will incentivize more crackdowns and family separations. The more you feed the monster, the bigger and hungrier it gets.

    Just as with Nixon's War on Drugs 55 years ago, billions of dollars and millions of lives will be needlessly destroyed while the real problems are misinterpreted or ignored

  2. When the consequences of this bill become real to working class voters in rural areas, pay close attention to how Trump will spin the problems they wil be encountering.

    Expect to hear A LOT about how Biden and Obama caused this because they allowed the national debt to grow to where it stands. (No mention will be made of the inconvenient fact that most of the national debt was accrued between 2017 and 2021.)

    And as Faux News repeats this big lie, it will get traction in MAGA World.

    1. And little comment that the OBBBA bill will add someplace around $4 TRILLION to the national debt over the next 10 years.  

      CFRB.org says

      The House of Representatives passed the Senate reconciliation bill, sending it to the President’s desk.

      This bill will be the most expensive reconciliation bill in history, adding $4.1 trillion to the national debt through 2034. If its temporary provisions are extended permanently, that total would rise to $5.5 trillion. Under the bill as written, the national debt would rise from 100 percent of the economy today to 127 percent by 2034.  

      And that increased debt does not include unknowns such as an economic downturn, a new medical crisis, and the secondary impacts of employment loss and brain drain to foreign countries. 

  3. I see ICE will become the best-funded federal law enforcement agency of them all thanks to the Well, We're All Going to Die Act, a/k/a Blowies for Billionaires. That means thousands upon thousands of otherwise unemployable gravy seals/right wing militia nuts will be collecting taxpayer-funded incomes. 

    1. Oh, you can rest assured they’ll be given plenty much more to do — what megalomaniacal dictator worth his daily salt adderall doesn’t have his own personal bigly, beautiful Schutzstaffel keeping busy?!?

      Anyway, it’s important to keep the proper perspective on this quick-march to bankruptcy and economic collapse; the oligarchs are getting many, many, many times more in new tax breaks than Donnie’s stormtroopers are gonna’ cost (dollar wise). So do try to be happy for our more fortunate betters — half of our craven, spineless legislators certainly are.

  4. It seems to be lost on Republican/MAGA voters that Republican areas will be hit the hardest with all the cuts. All the social programs, labor rights, healthcare, etc. conservatives enjoy while loving to bitch about the liberals that gave it to them will be stripped away. I don't really care about those people getting what they deserve. But I feel bad about eveyone else that had nothing to do with this shitshow that will get affected. 

      1. Pear, you're literally proving my point. You have to stop making it so easy to dunk on you, you're actually acting like a child that's plugging their fingers to their ears and saying "nah-huh". Give me an actual counterpoint, not just denial. And please, go talk to your fellow conseravtive voters. The bill is unpopular even among them. And yes, I'm still waiting for you and MAGA to thank those filthy liberals that made it possible for you and your family to enjoy social programs (while we still have it that is). I hope the cuts affect people like you first and everything seems to indicate it will at least.

        1. Admittedly, it’s difficult to know for sure, but I think its point might be that MAGA of its ilk are never gonna’ care how much T**** has screwed them and the country; they’re incapable of learning involving fact.  (But, I am genuinely surprised at the large number of syllables it expended constructing that “sentence”; it must be exhausted.)

        2. "You have to stop making it so easy to dunk on you, you're actually acting like a child that's plugging their fingers to their ears and saying 'nah-huh'"

          This is how Roger managed to finish a distant second behind Mike Coffman when he challenged Coffman for the GOP nomination for Congress.

          1. This explains alot. Pear/Roger is an actual nut. I’m assumng he lives in the Aurora area and this again contributes to my theory that Republicans residing in blue-leaning areas are the most extreme. Pear must live in a very small bubble if he thinks his opinions are popular even in where he lives.

            So for Pear/Roger, the only reason you don’t care about the cuts is because you’re lucky enough to live in Colorado and a well-off area within the state. They will try to protect your rights even if you don’t want to protect it yourself. Again, where is your gratitude? I still wish that we could be less lenient on Republicans. Let them do what they what but let’s not support their self-destruction and give them our hard-earned tax money. They don’t even want to help themselves so why waste our time or resources so they can use most of it up while whining for state money and government handouts (but still complaining against said handouts).

            1. When Roger ran against Mike Coffman, he was identified as "HIghlands Ranch Republican Roger Edwards"

              At the time, Colorado Pols wrote 

              Douglas County Republican Roger Edwards announced on Wednesday that he’s challenging U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman in next year’s GOP primary, charging the five-term incumbent with paying lip service to conservative priorities and using “identity politics” to divide residents of the battleground 6th Congressional District, he told Colorado Politics.

          2. Pity, but also quite an accomplishment when you consider how hard it must’ve worked to be able to get itself all the way to letter “c”?

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