#Replace Obamacare

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #16

April 26-May 3 2024

President Biden announced $3 billion to help replace lead pipes in the drinking water system. Millions of Americans get their drinking water through lead pipes, which are toxic, no level of lead exposure is safe. This problem disproportionately affects people of color and low income communities. This first investment of a planned $15 billion will replace 1.7 million lead pipe lines. The Biden Administration plans to replace all lead pipes in the country by the end of the decade.

President Biden canceled the student debt of 317,000 former students of a fraudulent for-profit college system. The Art Institutes was a for-profit system of dozens of schools offering degrees in video-game design and other arts. After years of legal troubles around misleading students and falsifying data the last AI schools closed abruptly without warning in September last year. This adds to the $29 billion in debt for 1.7 borrowers who wee mislead and defrauded by their schools which the Biden Administration has done, and a total debt relief for 4.6 million borrowers so far under Biden.

President Biden expanded two California national monuments protecting thousands of acres of land. The two national monuments are the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, which are being expanded by 120,000 acres. The new protections cover lands of cultural and religious importance to a number of California based native communities. This expansion was first proposed by then Senator Kamala Harris in 2018 as part of a wide ranging plan to expand and protect public land in California. This expansion is part of the Administration's goals to protect, conserve, and restore at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

The Department of Transportation announced new rules that will require car manufacturers to install automatic braking systems in new cars. Starting in 2029 all new cars will be required to have systems to detect pedestrians and automatically apply the breaks in an emergency. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projects this new rule will save 360 lives every year and prevent at least 24,000 injuries annually.

The IRS announced plans to ramp up audits on the wealthiest Americans. The IRS plans on increasing its audit rate on taxpayers who make over $10 million a year. After decades of Republicans in Congress cutting IRS funding to protect wealthy tax cheats the Biden Administration passed $80 billion for tougher enforcement on the wealthy. The IRS has been able to collect just in one year $500 Million in undisputed but unpaid back taxes from wealthy households, and shows a rise of $31 billion from audits in the 2023 tax year. The IRS also announced its free direct file pilot program was a smashing success. The program allowed tax payers across 12 states to file directly for free with the IRS over the internet. The IRS announced that 140,000 tax payers were able to use it over their target of 100,000, they estimated it saved $5.6 million in tax prep fees, over 90% of users were happy with the webpage and reported it quicker and easier than companies like H&R Block. the IRS plans to bring direct file nationwide next year.

The Department of Interior announced plans for new off shore wind power. The two new sites, off the coast of Oregon and in the Gulf of Maine, would together generate 18 gigawatts of totally clean energy, enough to power 6 million homes.

The Biden Administration announced new rules to finally allow DACA recipients to be covered by Obamacare. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an Obama era policy that allows people brought to the United States as children without legal status to remain and to legally work. However for years DACA recipients have not been able to get health coverage through the Obamacare Health Care Marketplace. This rule change will bring health coverage to at least 100,000 uninsured people.

The Department of Health and Human Services finalized rules that require LGBTQ+ and Intersex minors in the foster care system be placed in supportive and affirming homes.

The Senate confirmed Georgia Alexakis to a life time federal judgeship in Illinois. This brings the total number of federal judges appointed by President Biden to 194. For the first time in history the majority of a President's nominees to the federal bench have not been white men.

[kcyars99]

Donald trump says a lot of things that he later backs away from, and nobody holds him accountable for.

For instance, he said he would build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Never happened.

He said he'd have a replacement for Obamacare “in two weeks.” Never happened.

He said if he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he'd leave America. Never happened.

And when challenged to debates earlier this year, he said “Any time, any place.” But now he's scrambling for reasons to AVOID debating Kamala Harris.

Time after time, trump just says whatever is on his diseased, demented mind, and the press fails to question it, or hold him to account.

Then his followers all clamor to explain “what he really meant to say is…” while deflecting by spinning a bunch of whataboutisms.

For a person whose followers like him because he “says what he means,” it's clear that what he says is meaningless.

For now, until the press steps up, we're going to keep calling out his cowardly bullshit to make sure everyone knows #ChickenTrump is a COWARD.

[reality-detective]

BREAKING! SUPREME COURT TRAITORS EXPOSED — GORSUCH & ROBERTS PROTECT ILLEGAL INVADERS!

The war on America has reached the highest court. April 23, 2025 — while Trump fights to restore law, Deep State sleeper agents in the Supreme Court stab us in the back. Gorsuch and Roberts just sided with illegals, gutting Trump’s immigration crackdown.

This is a JUDICIAL COUP. The case? Monsalvo Velázquez v. Bondi — a known illegal ignored his 60-day deportation order. His deadline fell on a Saturday. He filed late. Any honest court would deport him. But these traitors weaponized a technicality, letting him stay.

60 days now means whenever THEY want. This ruling isn’t law. It’s SEDITION.

Gorsuch used outdated rules from the 1950s to shield illegals. Roberts? The same Roberts who protected Obamacare, refused to stop the stolen 2020 election, and now shields lawbreakers. Compromised. Controlled. Corrupt.

The whispers about blackmail, Epstein, foreign control? Not whispers anymore. Their rulings prove it.

TRUMP STRIKES BACK. Since his January 20, 2025 re-inauguration, Trump has been purging Deep State scum, empowering ICE, and deporting illegals by the thousands. This ruling? A desperate move to stop the storm.

But the storm can’t be stopped. Sources inside DHS confirm: this ruling will be ignored. Red states, through the National Sovereignty Compact, will enforce deadlines, deport illegals, and prosecute those who stand in the way.

This is Replacement Migration — a UN-backed plan to flood America with low-wage migrants, collapse the middle class, and build a globalist technocracy. Roberts, Gorsuch, and the traitors are pawns in this war.

Clarence Thomas and true patriots dissented: “No justification.”

The law was clear.

The betrayal is clear.

Trump’s new executive orders are ready. Wartime powers will override this treason. Justice is coming.

America First.

The clock is ticking... 🤔

[robertreich]

The Truth About Trumponomics

Trump and Republicans want to wreck your bank account. Here are 5 things you need to know about Trumponomics.

1.Trump wants tax cuts for the rich, at your expense.

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and big corporations added about $1.7 trillion to the national debt, with few benefits trickling down to the middle class — in fact, it raised taxes for more than 10 million American families.

Now Trump and Republicans want to make the tax cuts for the rich permanent, blowing up the debt even further. And then they’ll use that debt to justify this:

2. Trump would cut Social Security and Medicare — programs you’ve been paying into!

In every year of his presidency, Trump submitted a budget that tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. And he knows that’s the only way he can even begin to pay for extending his tax cuts for the rich.

3. Trump and his allies are pro-junk fee.

When the Biden administration issued a rule capping credit card late fees at $8, Sen. Tim Scott, a Trump surrogate, tried to overturn it in the Senate. And then a Trump-appointed judge issued a temporary injunction that blocked the rule from taking effect. Eliminating that rule would cost American families an estimated $10 billion a year.

And when the Biden administration required airlines to issue automatic refunds for canceled flights, Trump’s allies in Congress fought to block that too.

When Trump was in office, his administration fought against efforts to rein in airline junk fees.

Corporations nickel and diming us like this makes inflation worse. If Trump gets back in the White House, buckle up for more junk fees.

4. Trump would send health care costs soaring.

Republicans have committed to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which would strip Medicare of the ability to negotiate drug prices, and let Big Pharma send the price of insulin and other life-saving medicines back through the roof.

And Trump is still fixated on repealing Obamacare, with no plan to replace it.

TRUMP: Obamacare is a disaster. We’re gonna do something about it.

That would strip coverage from tens of millions of Americans, drive up premiums, and let insurers charge more or deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

5, If you’ve got student debt, you’re out of luck with Trump.

In contrast to President Biden, who’s canceled more than $160 billion of student debt so far, Trump is against student debt relief. In his first term, he tried to eliminate the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for people like teachers and nurses, and he’s called the idea of debt relief “unfair.”

What’s unfair, is how student debt hurts not just the roughly 40 million Americans burdened by it, but the entire economy, since Americans with debt have less money to spend, are less likely to start a business, less likely to buy a home, and more likely to rely on government assistance.

The MAGA agenda would make nearly every aspect of your life more expensive, while making the richest Americans even richer.

Teddy Roosevelt’s economic plan was called the Square Deal. Franklin Roosevelt’s was the New Deal.

What Trump is offering is simply a Raw Deal.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Corporate Bullshit

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:

https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht

I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the The American Prospect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have gigantic backlog of reading):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.

It's a four-stage plan:

I. First, insist that there is no problem.

Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary and they're caused by sunspots and they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).

II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.

An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is actually an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people.

III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.

Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.

IV. This is socialism.

Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").

Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.

We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs

First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

Or the oil CEOs who boasted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave them cover to just screw us at the pump:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#soak-the-rich

There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose sole purpose is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

To rents:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy

Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists lost their minds and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would destroy the economy:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-millennial-economist-who-took-on-the-world/

You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can assure you, Kamala Harris is not a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1824580470052725055

The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it – for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys – we can vaccinate ourselves against it.

Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics – that is, doing stuff – rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/seeing-like-a-matt

Corporate Bullshit is a brisk and bracing read – I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday – and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it does make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/#narratives

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day - Boston again… another great overpass banner sign there….

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jun 04, 2025

Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.

The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.

The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.

Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.

Taken together, these studies illustrate how Trump’s economic policies are designed to transfer wealth from consumers to the wealthy and corporations. From 1981 to 2021, American policies moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. After Biden stopped that upward transfer, the Trump administration is restarting it again, on steroids.

Just how these policies are affecting Americans is no longer clear, though. Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that economists no longer trust the accuracy of the government’s inflation data. Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles a huge monthly survey of employment and costs, told economists that staffing shortages and a hiring freeze have forced them to cut back on their research and use less precise methods for figuring out price changes. Grossman reports that the bureau has also cut back on the number of places where it collects data and that the administration has gotten rid of committees of external experts that worked to improve government statistics.

There is more than money at stake in the administration’s policies. The administration's gutting of the government seeks to decimate the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights and to replace it with a government that permits a few wealthy men to rule.

The CBO score for the Republicans’ omnibus bill projects that if it is enacted, 16 million people will lose access to healthcare insurance over the next decade in what is essentially an assault on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The bill also dramatically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) benefits, clean energy credits, aid for student borrowers, benefits for federal workers, and consumer protection services, while requiring the sale of public natural resources.

These cuts continue those the administration has made since Trump took office, many of which fell under the hand of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” But, while billionaire Elon Musk was the figurehead for that group, it appears his main interest was in collecting data. His understudy, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, appears to have determined the direction of the cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.

Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government in order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.

Yesterday the White House asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion in already-appropriated spending that the Department of Government Efficiency identified as wasteful, a procedure known as “rescission.” Trump aides say the money funds programs that promote what they consider inappropriate ideologies, including public media networks PBS and NPR; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food and basic medical care globally; and PEPFAR, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that was established under President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries and is currently credited with saving about 26 million lives.

Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where members scolded him for neglecting to provide a budget for the year, which they need to do their jobs. But Vought had plenty to say about the things he is doing. According to ProPublica’s Andy Kroll, he claimed that under Biden “every agency became a tool of the Left.” He said the White House will continue to ask for rescissions, but also noted that, as Project 2025 laid out, he does not believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend the money that Congress has appropriated, is constitutional, despite court decisions saying it is.

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told Vought: “Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.”

The use of the government to impose evangelical beliefs on the country, even at the expense of lives, also appears to be an administration goal. Yesterday, the administration announced it is ending the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance to hospital emergency rooms that accept Medicare—which is virtually all of them—requiring that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act they must perform an abortion in an emergency if the procedure is necessary to prevent a patient’s organ failure or severe hemorrhaging. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients.

The Trump administration will no longer enforce that policy. Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press found that even when the Biden administration policy was being enforced, dozens of pregnant women, some of whom needed emergency abortions, were turned away from emergency rooms with advice to “let nature take its course.”

Finally tonight, in what seems likely to be an attempt to distract attention from the omnibus bill and all the controversy surrounding it, Trump banned Harvard from hosting foreign students. He also banned nationals from a dozen countries—Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States, an echo of the travel ban of his first term that threw the country into chaos.

Trump justified his travel ban by citing the attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, on peaceful demonstrators marching to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. An Egyptian national who had overstayed a tourist visa hurled Molotov cocktails at the marchers, injuring 15 people.

Egypt is not on the list of countries whose nationals Trump has banned from the United States.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[democratthatlovesguns]

Trump's Health Plan

SOOOOOO, THREE DAYS TO GO ... DOES DONALD TRUMP HAVE A PLAN TO REPLACE OBAMACARE THAT WE CAN REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OR IS IT STILL IN THE "CONCEPT" STAGE?

[studiokhara]

i honestly think rin is hilarious as fuck. he yicks me out don't get me wrong but that scene he had with morvay while morvay was his captive audience made me laugh. he's so overt and singleminded about his incest kink that it wraps around to being funny. literally no one else is pushing the narrative that eiden and him are brothers. huey never gave enough of a shit to define it. whether or not they're objectively brothers doesnt matter bc RIN thinks they are.

if rin had candy crush on his eiden ipad mirror then maybe he wouldnt have gotten psychosexually obsessed with eiden. rin is 26* yrs old he should be at the club. my man (hes not my man) needs hobbies.

i just ramble more about rin / his portrayal / fandom reception under the cut.

idt the writers are pro-incest ships bc its obvious in this game when something is meant to be titillating. eiden literally says "that's hot as hell! 🤩" about the most ugly outfits ive ever seen that im supposed to like enough to pull on. but rin grosses out eiden AND morvay with every other sentence that comes out of his mouth. BOTH OF THEM!

anyway if rin wasnt on his brothercon agenda, if you ctrl+h replaced every single time rin says "brother" with "eiden", their entire situation would have a completely different vibe and totally couldve come off like the vanitas/ventus situation in kingdom hearts. which kh fans can certainly also interpret shipping them together as incest.

but rin gets off on it so he won't give it up. even if they aren't actually brothers, he certainly thinks so. and he has the tenacity to creep everyone else out into thinking so too.

i think its also undeniable that rin is going to be a regular feature in the cast. theres so much merch of him. they wouldnt have let their product managers and artists sink so many resources into him if he WASNT going to become a cast regular.

but the writers didnt even fully commit to piss kink you think they're going to genuinely go for something as controversial as twincest? they still have a warehouse of rin standees to sell...

all this to say that everyone in the fandom interpreting rin + eiden as brothers and creating huey single father aus and pigeonholing them into nuclear family roles are drinking rin's incest koolaid. and rin is the one brewing the huge vats of incest koolaid. so totally understandable to be disgusted/squicked out by him. stay safe out there yall

*i know eiden and thus rin are canonically 23 yrs old. but eiden comes off much more like a guy who's just past his mid-twenties. to me** he is EXTREMELY twenty six years old.

** im biased bc im american. but my perception of eiden being specifically 26 is explained by... 1. landing his first full time job (right before he got isekaid) 2. the same jaded tired feeling of someone who is no longer on their parents insurance (obamacare mentioned) and 3. can no longer fuck around part time working part time clubbing. eiden doesnt have parents but this feeling persists. if you've been 26 in america you know exactly what i mean

[sophieinwonderland]

I have been reading your posts about Republicans. Honestly, the only good Republican in modern times I can name is the late John McCain. Agree with him or not, he was a good man at least. The face of Mitch McConnell when McCain refused to repeal Obamacare was priceless. He refused to repeal it because he knew that just repealing it would leave a ton of Americans without healthcare while waiting for a replacement, which could take years considering how slow politics often is (assuming they even had a plan to begin with).

I find it very difficult to believe Mitch McConnell wasn't aware of the fact it would take a long time to replace Obamacare with something that may or may not be better and that in the meantime numerous Americans would be without healthcare.

It's honestly sickening to think about.

I agree!

It's also worth noting this moment from John McCain's run for President:

Something I want to focus on here though is that it shows pretty well how even as John McCain was running a respectable campaign, the Republican PEOPLE were already becoming Trump's electorate.

There's this myth that I sometimes see that presents Trump as being a corrupting figure that somehow turned Republicans bad. And the Republican voters just are swept up in it.

So I think it's worth looking back at the time the Republican frontrunner tried countering the racist fearmongering about Obama, and HIS crowed booed him for it.

It's no surprise that this crowd would later support Trump as he mocked McCain for being a prisoner of war.

"He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured,”

As far as I'm concerned, most Republicans have been this for a while. Trump just gave them permission to embrace their hate more publicly.

[calm-with-anxiety]

If I see or hear people defending their votes for Trump with “well I didn’t really know her policies and plans for her presidency” I will burst into flames. We live in a time where almost every piece of information is in your hand, you could’ve Googled her plans, it was on her fucking website for weeks, it was 80 pages of policy and how they planned to pay for it. Like you chose to be an uneducated voter that got information from commercials and short form video.

The economy line is bullshit because his plans will make everything more expensive, tariffs are payed for by you, you think the multibillion dollar company will take on the extra cost to buy and ship goods by lowering the CEO salary, no, they will make the item more expensive because they never promised you a $200 tv, but they did promise stockholders a dividend of $10/share. His mass deportation policy will cause the economy to collapse because immigrants, legal or illegal, do the jobs that others look down on. You never see a line of white guys in overalls hoping to be hired for below minimum wage to pick fruit for hours in the sun, you don’t see young white men showing up to construction jobs that the builder has subcontracted so it’s cheaper to build. The bedrock of the U.S. economy is cheap labor and a majority of that is immigrants who are looking for jobs that don’t require knowing perfect English and have employers that look the other way when you don’t have documents because they know you will work for anything.

Don’t even get me started on healthcare, outside of women’s healthcare which will get worse, if he finally gets rid of the affordable care act, aka Obamacare, they will replace it with nothing. The man was president before and after John McCain put his thumb down they never tried to make a new policy that wasn’t throwing the whole program into the trash. Also the affordable care act is more than just low cost healthcare, it put in place pre-existing conditions, for those too young to remember, the insurance companies could deny you coverage all because you might get cancer one day because your mother had it, you would have to pay out of pocket for an inhaler because asthma was a pre-existing condition, even if you were diagnosed with it later in life. Don’t forget what the vaccine situation will be, especially if he puts RFK jr. anywhere near it, like there is actual fear that Polio will come back because guess what? Most people under the age of 40 are not vaccinated for it because it was considered eradicated due to the mass vaccination of children in the 50s and 60s. When you complain about feeling like shit after getting the flu shot or a Covid booster, that is the vaccine working in your body, your body is doing an internal workout so if and when you come in contact with those viruses you won’t be getting extremely sick or die because someone doesn’t know how to cover their cough.

I think this election was proof that you can have all the information and still know nothing because you chose to know nothing. People vote with their eyes, not their mind. Gas where I live has been under $3.00 for months, it’s been under $2.50 at the warehouse stores for weeks, but because an ad on tv said prices are rising people believed the tv over their own experience. People saw grocery prices increase and blamed the administration when in reality corporations took advantage of Covid shortages, raised prices, recorded historic profits, and didn’t start bring prices down until this summer after people realized what was happening to some extent and even then they didn’t return to pre-2020 prices because the profit still needed to be high, they looked at the $2 increase in a bag of chips over 4 years and blamed democrats and not Lays.

This is going to be a painful 4 years, for many people here and abroad, Ukraine will have to depend on Europe which is starting to lean conservative as well and the war in Gaza will take an extreme shift that will make the last year look like a paper cut in terms of humanitarian assistance and a possible end. It’s already getting on my nerves as people tweet “we keep fighting” and “we need to be strong so they can’t do all they plan to do like the first time”, it’s not going to be like the first time, the adults in the room he had with him, many who came out and supported Harris, are gone and now it will be yes men that he was told to put there by the extreme right like the supporters of project 2025 and billionaires. And for those saying “well maybe he will die in office”, you think JD Vance is better? He allegedly picked him because DT jr. suggested him and if you have ever seen jr. and his takes you would know Vance can be worse.

This is gonna hurt for many people that will now be seen as lower than second class citizens and you won’t even have lower prices to show for it as that seemed to be the reason you voted for him, enjoy your expensive goods as people lost rights.

[reality-detective]

BOOM!!! President Trump DESTROYS NBC’s Kristen Welker in a 1-Hour 16-Minute Masterclass!

President Trump sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker, and what unfolded was nothing short of monumental. Over the course of 1 hour and 16 minutes, Trump dismantled her arguments, exposed her hypocrisy, and delivered a masterclass in leadership.

Kristen Welker Exposed!

Welker didn’t come prepared for Trump’s brilliance. She condescended, attempted to spin narratives, and failed miserably at making her points. At one moment, she tried to push for raising the minimum wage, and Trump calmly educated her on basic economics.

Manipulating the Constitution?

In an embarrassing moment, Welker deceptively edited the 14th Amendment, conveniently omitting the critical phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” while discussing birthright citizenship. Trump, unphased, reminded her of what the Constitution actually says.

On Obamacare: Trump explained that although he wanted to repeal and replace it, he still ran it better than anyone else could have to ensure the country stayed afloat. Welker couldn’t grasp the point, proving once again she’s out of her depth.

Double Standards Galore:

Welker lectured Trump about the “weight of his words” while completely ignoring Biden’s open threats against Trump, claiming Biden wasn’t involved in Trump’s legal persecution. The hypocrisy was glaring.

January 6th and Media Hypocrisy:

Welker turned the conversation to Jan. 6, attempting to corner Trump. But his calm and collected response shamed not just her but the entire mainstream media for their biased narrative.

Vaccines and Autism:

Welker contradicted her own network by claiming autism rates haven’t risen, attributing it to improved diagnoses. Yet NBC itself admitted diagnosis improvements don’t fully explain the surge. Trump caught her in the lie.

Trump OWNS Welker:

Trump brilliantly turned the tables, pointing out the corruption in the DOJ and FBI, which operate as rogue agencies serving the elite, not the people. He outlined the proper way to hold them accountable—through Congress and lawful investigations.

This wasn’t just an interview. It was a declaration of dominance by Trump. While the media flounders in bias and lies, Trump continues to expose the truth with clarity and strength. The tide is turning. The storm is here.

We’ve waited for years… and now it’s here. The Deep State’s downfall has begun, and nothing can stop it now.

It's about to get real 🤔

If you want to watch the video 👇

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Kilgore at NY Intelligencer:

As you probably know, we’re beginning the final week of a dead-even presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes being the most desperately sought prize by both campaigns. Team Trump is already having a difficult week in the Keystone State thanks to a crude racist joke about Puerto Rico that one of Trump’s comedian buddies told at his wild Madison Square Garden rally, which is not going over well among the pivotal bloc of Puerto Rican voters in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now, Harris has gotten a helping hand in the same vicinity from none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, as NBC News reports:

[House Speaker Mike Johnson took a dig at Obamacare during an event in Pennsylvania on Monday, telling a crowd there will be “massive” health care changes in America if Donald Trump wins the election. “Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson, R-La., said in Bethlehem while campaigning for GOP House candidate Ryan Mackenzie, according to video footage obtained by NBC News. “No Obamacare?” one attendee asked Johnson, referring to the law Democrats passed in 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act. “No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”]

Health care is not at all an issue Trump wants Republicans talking about. The effort to repeal Obamacare was one of the less popular initiatives of his presidency and, not coincidentally, one of his biggest failures. It’s also one of the areas where Harris has outpolled him. He added to his problems during the September debate with his rival when he could cite only “the concepts of a plan” for replacing Obamacare despite having allegedly spent many years on his own yet-to-be-revealed proposal.

Worse yet, Johnson’s remarks very strongly suggest two things that are potentially dangerous to Trump in the eyes of swing voters: (1) He plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, which likely means it would be rolled into a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill and steamrolled through to passage if possible, and (2) his party’s designs on health-care policy are radical, meant to replace the regulations central to Obamacare’s coverage guarantees with “free market” provisions almost certain to return the health-care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone old, sick, or poor. Johnson’s rhetoric will also give Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that the last “repeal Obamacare” package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for poor people and a key part of the country’s social safety net

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) if the Republicans get a trifecta. This is a wakeup call to vote Democratic, especially in the House and the Presidential race.

[bobcatmoran]

Trump is asked if he has a plan to replace Obamacare.

Basically, he doesn't. The Democrats wouldn't vote to repeal it with nothing to replace it. How dare.

He saved it. But it's never gonna be great. They're looking at different plans.

"So you do not still have a plan?" Davis asks. The answer is, basically, no.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker, Politico

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 31, 2024

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.  

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living

will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one. 

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.” 

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations. 

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. 

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” 

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” 

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare. 

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler. 

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.” 

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone. 

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally. 

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.” 

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[democratthatlovesguns]

How greed is the main factor driving inflation.

And why didn't the Biden administration rollback the tariffs that the Trump administration set in place, if it would have reduced inflation?

Okay so, unlike MAGA republicans, the Biden administration knows that it's important to listen to expert economists on topics in which they recognize they have a great deal of bias. And the Biden administration knows how to weigh the options available and determine what is best for everyone regardless of political party.

The truth is, removal of the Trump tariffs would only have improved inflation slightly and temporarily, but the cost of removal would possibly come at great risk to the American people. That is what the experts said, and their expertise was what Biden trusted in keeping the tariffs; it was not because they were the magic potion solution to a recovering economy that Trump would have you believe.

Biden's actions, of course, are in great contrast to Trump and let's state just one example, Obamacare. Trump was shown and told many times that repealing Obamacare would result in very negative outcomes for a lot of Americans. Did he give one fuck about that? NO. He tried multiple times to repeal the law completely, and replace it with "a concept of a plan."

Back to inflation.

In the last three years, late 2021 to present, many people saw themselves rethinking their careers and their choices in life - without taking money too much into consideration. Great news for opportunist assholes like Kevin O'Leary.

What happens when a large portion of the population decides to "reinvent" themselves? Usually it means they're willing to take a pay cut to obtain an entry level position in a career they always wanted or wanted to at least try OR it means that they take a leap and try to run their own business.

That's great news to owners and shareholders of large corporations: A large wave of entry level applicants to non-union jobs. Greed dictates, as Kevin O'Leary does, that you should fire the guy working forty-hour weeks and earning his living wage after twenty years of consistent quality work; greed says "fire that guy and hire two new guys at minimum wage and if you can, no overtime pay."

And the greed does not end there.

Using "inflation" as a pretext large corporations were able to drive down the price of labor across the supply chain. Look at how many owner operators in the trucking business went out of business ... Look at why Yellow Logistics went bankrupt - they could not pay the living wage "rate" that the union needed for it's workers. A surplus of available labor in the industry resulted in starvation wages, literally. Read some of the stories out there, there were truckers literally paying to take loads instead of earning from taking loads.

And it wasn't just the truckers, people in the background like freight brokers also took big hits "because ... inflation."

So what did assholes like Kevin O'Leary do to help consumers and small businesses?

Owners and shareholders were enjoying substantial savings in manufacturing labor, transport, retail workers, all granted because "inflation" and people became scared of losing their jobs. Did they pass on the savings to consumers? Sure, in the MAGA world with alternative facts (fiction) that's presumably what they did. In the real world, they jacked up prices ... "because ... inflation."

Small retail business didn't stand a chance either. Large retailers could always negotiate massive discounts on wholesale purchases that mom and pop shops could never leverage to compete with. Anybody starting a small retail business soon found it was better to go out out business than continue to lose money.

So corporate leaders enjoyed substantial savings across the board and continued to raise prices for consumers ...

AND THEN THEY REPORTED RECORD PROFITS! IN SOME INSTANCES, MANY TIMES THEIR WILDEST PROJECTIONS.

Look at the collusion in the meat industry and companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola if you need more details.

Yet, Elon is able to convince half of the American people that "big cuts" are necessary to reduce America's debt. He's certainly not going to cut money that gets funneled to his pockets, for sure. He is going to cut social security and Medicare because we all know how frivolously old people spend their money. I mean, I understand.

It's like Senator Ron Johnson said, "Senior citizens have misused social security and that's why I want it to sunset."

TBH, many a time, I have had to drive to the club ... the strip club ... to drag grandma out of there. She's in there all like "make it rain bitches" while tossing fitties and hundeds in the air and buying everyone round after round of cognac. Grandma is all like, "fitties for them titties"! And I'm all like, "Grandma you incorrigible lesbo! What about your insulin and your rent?!" [I can use the word lesbo because I have zero lesbian friends ... That's not my preference, I just have a "military look" and people make assumptions (not unfounded).]

Anyway, so what do they do when Kamala Harris states that safeguards against price gouging should be rolled out to help the American people, and that corporations should be taxed more to pay for social benefits like health care and education (that will never be paid through bullshit trickle down economics)? They send a complete dumbass anti-Semitic asshole like Mel Gibson to call Kamala Harris low IQ and stupid when it comes to economics.

To clarify, Kamala Harris understands economics much better than Mel Gibson ever will. She also understands greed and what it can drive innocent sounding people to do.

Yes, ideally, corporations would pay zero tax ... But in such an ideal world, everyone employed by the corporation from the janitor to the CEO would earn enough from a forty hour work week (not a one hundred hour work week as proposed by Elon) to afford housing, food, health care, transportation, and everyone would still have a little left over for a Sunday steak dinner with the family and a little entertainment. This ideal world will never come to be, not because it's impossible, but because greedy assholes like Elon don't believe workers "deserve" such an existence as lowly employees.

WE DON'T TAX CORPORATIONS TO BE ASSHOLES, WE TAX THEM BECAUSE WE WANT THEM TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE OF THE SOCIAL SERVICES THEIR WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES HAVE EARNED.

The people that will suffer the most under Elon's rule on government spending will be the children, the elderly, the mentally or physically disabled. When you cast your vote, have them in mind, and ask yourself how much should they suffer so that Trump, Elon, and their billionaire friends can grow their "ego" wealth.

[tomorrowusa]

Nope, Trump didn't "salvage" Obamacare as J.D. Vance claimed.

Some fact-checking from the vice presidential debate. From NPR.

During his presidency, Trump undermined the Affordable Care Act in many ways — for instance, by slashing funding for advertising and free "navigators" who help people sign up for a health insurance plan on HealthCare.gov. And rather than deciding to "save" the ACA, he tried hard to get Congress to repeal it, and failed. The Biden administration has reversed course from Trump's management of the Affordable Care Act. Increased subsidies have made premiums more affordable in the marketplaces, and enrollment has surged. The uninsurance rate has dropped to its lowest point ever during the Biden administration. The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and is entrenched in the health care system. Republicans successfully ran against Obamacare for about a decade, but it has faded as a campaign issue this year.

So just the opposite of what J.D. claimed. The Trump administration didn't save Obamacare, it tried to sabotage and kill it.

People who have a weirdly nostalgic view of the Trump administration forget how he tried to kill Obamacare with help from the Republican majority 115th Congress. From its inception, Republicans in Congress have tried to kill Obamacare 70 times.

Obamacare may not be perfect, but it is superior to what existed previously. The bulk of people who hate it are connected to Big Pharma, for profit medical corporations, and the Republicans who get big campaign contributions from them.

The name Obamacare tells us a lot. It was coined as term of disparagement for the Affordable Care Act by Republicans. But it became so popular that Republicans ended up shooting themselves in the foot by eternally connecting the ACA to the Democratic president who was the driving force behind it.

Trump has had nine years to come up with a viable alternative to Obamacare. But the "stable genius" still can't put together a coherent sentence about what he'd replace it with.

For affordable healthcare, vote Democratic to improve it or vote MAGA Republican to destroy it.