No More Tiny Violins 🎻 🎻  🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯

STFU: Though it’s hard to tell, the government is in shutdown mode. Trump and his many Republican abettors are blaming the Democrats, asserting that they are responsible because all but three of them including, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, and Maine’s Independent Angus King, have refused to sign on to the continuing funding resolution.  The Republican claim is that Democrats are holding out because the resolution doesn’t fund health care for “illegal aliens.”  That’s a lie. Except for emergency care, undocumented people are barred from having their health care paid for by Medicaid or any other government program.  Democrats are holding out in an attempt to get the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that were put in place under Biden renewed. The three who voted with all the Republicans except for frequent naysayer Rand Paul want the subsidies renewed, but fear that holding out will leave Democrats holding the bag and since Trump has already started defunding important “blue” projects, like the tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York, while still building his mega Maga ballroom that’s a genuine concern.  Democrats would also like to get some or all of the $1 billion that was cut from Medicaid reinstated but that’s less likely to happen at least until the dead bodies start piling up.  The Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s big ugly bill don’t take effect until after the midterms so though they are likely to have a dire effect on hospitals and those cut from the program, many affected voters don’t realize what lies ahead.  However, unlike the Medicaid cuts, the Affordable Care Act subsidies expire at the end of the year. Estimates are that the premiums included in the insurance company annual renewal notices that are due out during the next few weeks will be more than double 2025 levels.  Democrats, not all that skilled at messaging, are hoping that those premium notices will drive their point home.  Republicans are hoping to get the sixty votes they need by getting enough Democratic Senators to fold before the notices go out by promising to take up the subsidy issue at a later date, a variation on Trump’s oft promised rolling “two weeks.” Trump, with the assistance of Project 2025 scribe/OMB Director Russel Vought, whose lifetime goal is to radically shrink government, is using the threat of massive firings as a cudgel to get the requisite number of weak-kneed Democrats on board.  Though not entirely legal, that threat is real because the Supreme Court keeps  “reinterpreting” law to allow Trump to do whatever he wants.  The bottom line is that if Schumer and Jeffries hold firm, this shutdown will go on for weeks until the premium notices go out at which point those Republican and swing voters, who don’t regularly pay attention to the news or who just watch Fox, and the other MAGA media outlets, might notice just how much they are being screwed and beg for help, like the help that Trump is giving to Argentina and those farmers who’ve lost their Chinese soybean market because of his tariffs.      

INS and Outs: Among the reasons that few have noticed the shutdown that so far no one has missed a paycheck and because Trump with the help of cosplay Kristi Noem continues to send INS agents into “war ravaged” cities, and by that think Democratic cities mostly in states with Democratic Governors, many of whom hope to someday be president.  The administration which has been hogtying unclothed children in Chicago is also trying really hard to also send National Guard Troops into those cities, because as both Trump and Secretary of War, Preening, and Stupidity Pete Hegseth keep telling us, those troops need to practice brutality somewhere because if they were less diverse and meaner they would have emerged victorious from Viet Nam and Afghanistan. C’mon, it’s not like history is among heel spur Trump and Hegseth’s strong points.  Over the weekend, noting that she saw no evidence of war or ravage, District Court Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from sending Oregon’s National Guard troops into Portland, one of those cities that he insists, based on videos from several years ago, is overrun and controlled by antifa and the like.  Trump who appointed Immergut in 2019, responded to her order by lambasting her and saying that the idiots who advised him to appoint her had failed him miserably because his judges need to do what he says, law be damned. Trump’s Pocket Fascist, Stephen Miller, pretty much called for actions to be taken against uncooperative judges, and it may not be a coincidence that the house of one of those judges, South Carolina’s Diane Goodstein, who ruled against Republican efforts to get hold of voter rolls, was blown up this weekend, though we still don’t know for sure what caused the explosion.  After Immergut’s ruling Trump ordered the California National Guard to go into Portland.  Unimpressed with his “work around” the Judge then barred him from sending any state’s National Guard into Portland, a problem for Trump who’s ever willing MAGA buddy, Texas Governor Abbott volunteered his National Guard instead. Of course, all of Trump’s National Guard problems could be short lived because he’s got friends at SCOTUS, and these days enough of the Justices have shown that they’re willing to throw the law and precedent aside to meet his demands.  That said, at least for now SCOTUS isn’t willing to allow him to fire Lisa Cook, the Black woman at the Federal Reserve Bank who he’s trying to fire for committing mortgage fraud, the “crime” that’s she doesn’t appear to have committed and that’s only a problem for Democrats, like Senator Adam Schiff and NY Attorney General Letitia James, but not for the members of his cabinet who may have actually committed mortgage fraud. Turning back to Kristi Noem, she and her “aide” AKA boyfriend Corey Lewandowski announced plans to flood the Super Bowl with INS agents because the “woke” NFL has selected Puerto Rico born Bad Bunny as its half time entertainment.  They and many in MAGA and on Fox are outraged that Bad Bunny sings in Spanish.  I don’t know about you, but I am going to do what Senor Bunny suggested on SNL, practica mi Espanol and escucha to his music so that I can keep up come February, assuming of course that I can stop listening to Taylor Swift’s newest, and how can you not love the woman who celebrates wood while warning not to send tiny 🎻 🎻 to a knife fight.

Fog:  The hostages may be released soon and that would be an excellent thing.  However, it’s rather disturbing that Trump has promised to protect Qatar from all further “enemy” incursions, giving the country who has hosted Hamas leadership and funded Hamas’ worse actions the Article 5 like protections that he only reluctantly agrees to give our NATO allies.  It looks like that plane, the one that needs around $1 billion in refurbishment to become Air Force One, came with strings after all.  

#BringThemAllHomeNow