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Cake day: August 14th, 2024

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  • Javier Milei’s plan to privatize the Paraguay-Paraná waterway

    maniacal laughter GODDAMN! Woo! That fucking Libertarian paradise comes at you fast. Man, Milei is in over his fucking head and the depth of it is slowly dawning on him at about the pace 80 year-olds fuck. All those experts are gone and my boy here is fucking treading water in a slow panic seeing the picnic he’s planned in the hurricane.

    potentially benefiting multinational businesses at the expense of the local population.

    Oh no, that’s exactly what it’s out to do. Milei is looking for capital injection after his nose dive on inflation. Like all of the austerity, Milei has successfully slowed inflation down drastically, but has done so by basically bringing his country’s economy to a damn near halt. That’s the easy part. You stop putting any kind of investment into the public, they hold onto their money longer, economy slows and inflation basically flat lines.

    The trick is that once you’ve got the economy this cold and all the fluidity has almost frozen completely, you warm it back up and try to control the thing to prevent another run away inflation. That’s the difficult part, because your people have to trust you to play their part and not be scared they’ll watch their dollars buy less and less again. And you’ve got to warm it up, because if it completely freezes, then you leave recession and enter depression where money enters a glacial pace of movement.

    The thing I find funny is that the Libertarian paradise puts all the trust completely into the hands of the public. Which given how cold Milei has made his economy, is either the most insane or genius thing ever. But then he does this and, “AH, he wasn’t going to trust them after all.” He’s going to wheel and deal and see where it lands. Problem is that the folks with money know the position he’s put himself into. The cards are stacked in the favor of the rich people who Milei wants to invest in his country and boy are they going to play their hand.

    Hornsby sang a song about it. “That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is. Ah, but don’t you believe them.” Man people are hungry to think this shit ain’t going to play out the same way it always does. It amazing the lengths folks go to thinking that. It’s shit like this that makes me think hope is one of those bad four letter words.


  • The Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) handles:

    • Medicare
    • Medicaid
    • the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
    • the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance Marketplaces

    They are also in charge of:

    • Setting the health insurance portability standards for the United States
    • The administrative end of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
    • Setting the Federal quality standards in long-term care (nursing homes)
    • Clinical laboratory quality standards under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) of 1988

    So it’s not just Medicare and Medicaid, but millions of people within the ACA and including seven million children in CHIPs that he’ll be overseeing. Not to mention setting the standards of care for millions of people in nursing homes.






  • The postrat folk. The deep value Silicon Valley folk. Core Techbro kind of people.

    Would have thought they’d be prone to sticking with Musk

    Ditto, but at the same time. Being with daddy Musk might be too traditional at this point. No idea the reasons, but you can to see a lot of this popping up in that circle on Twitter.

    TPOT → Bluesky is actually an interesting example of what looks like a successful transplantation… quasi-existential concerns about Elon Twitter, vibes have been off leading to big cascades of migration tend to happen after inciting incidents (eg twitter banning substack links being a canary in the coal mine)

    You know the “I sound super thoughtful” kind of stuff. Lots of praise from that Group on XTwitter/Bluesky.



  • That’s not the victory Republicans will think it is.

    The House Freedom caucus routinely has at least one or two who dig their heels in over “this bill doesn’t go FAR enough!”

    With a 218 majority, that means 100% of the Republicans have to toe the line. Not a single person can be out of line, something that rarely happens with either party. There’s usually at least ONE person who doesn’t like the outcome.

    This is going to put a lot of people who are known for digging in their heels into very precarious situations. Either they toe the line and have to accept some compromise because of Democrats in the Senate looking to filibuster. Or they alone hijack the Republican plans.

    And woe if someone dies, gets sick, or retires in office on their side, something that also happens at least once per year on either side.


  • Yeah. We don’t have anything in place for this kind of thing, so we had to rely exclusively on things we use for corporate litigation and what have you. The whole impeachment, that’s about it as for what our founders created to protect us and if Congress doesn’t exercise that power, well this is what happens. That whole argument way back “the courts will settle this” from the Senate that gave him a pass, that was the Senate knowing they failed and trying to pass the blame elsewhere.

    Trump got away with everything because the actual few protections we have, the people entrusted to use those powers lacked the spine to actually use that power. Cowardice is how we got here. A short but important line of defense was entrusted to weak minded people and so they failed at every step of the way.

    Perhaps we will one day fix these shortcomings. Maybe. But this shows that if we give power to weak individuals that will put wealth, power, and their own interests over the rule of law, then we don’t have a country. The Constitution is only a sheet of paper if we do nothing to enforce it.






  • WHAAAAATTT?!

    Rubio? Dang. That’s a choice. There’s Romney, Paul, Barrasso, and Cruz that are some heavy hitters on the Committee on Foreign Relations and he went with Rubio? I mean shit, Rand Paul is who I would think would slide the best into Trump’s Sec. of State. There’s likely no one for Sec. of State that’s on Foreign Rel. that’s been more meticulous about the southern border that him. Additionally, the man is an easy pick for if you wanted to have someone sign a giant check from the US Treasury to Israel in the amount of ALL dollars.

    Rubio is a bit more slow paced. Don’t get me wrong, he wants a wall just as much, but he’d likely slow walk it to allow it to gain heavy media traction. Paul would just be like “Give me some fucking bricks”.

    is viewed by State Department officials as unlikely to overly politicize the role

    That is a massive understatement there.

    All I have to say is color me surprised by the choice. I mean, obviously Trump is going to tell Romney to eat shit, but shit if Foreign Rel. is where Trump was going for Sec. of State, I would have surely thought Paul would be a a perfect fit to Trump’s mannerisms.


  • Dems Should Steal It Back.

    Or you know, Bernie should just have it and everyone should stop stealing it. I mean I’m as liberal as they come, but c’mon Democrats, stop stealing Bernie’s shit and leaving him behind and just listen to what Senator Sanders is telling you will actually win Americans.

    I mean, I get it, I’m bummed about Trump, but shit, PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING THIS CYCLE DNC!! I mean there’s a ton of reasons for why Trump won, but holy fuck, Democrats if you could run something just few nanometers short of the current level of insipid political rhetoric, that would be amazing.

    I’ll still vote Democrat on the mid term, but c’mon drink a Red Bull or something.