This November's Election Is For All The Marbles

With President Biden officially dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, and VP Kamala Harris the most likely candidate in his place, the 2024 election just got that much more interesting.  This is of course right on the heels of the recent (and mysterious) assassination attempt on Trump (which we condemn, of course), which has apparently elevated him to "martyr" status among his cult-like base.  

Make no mistake, this election is for ALL the marbles.  And not just because the Donald has lost his marbles (he lost them long ago), but because the stakes are even higher still this time around.  A vote for Trump (or a vote for any third party candidate, or not voting at all) is effectively a vote for Project 2025, the latest Republican agenda, which would lead America into Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare.  What they are proposing is downright horrifying to say the least!  And it is also a vote for the Trump-Putin-Xi-Kim Axis of Evil as well.  Some may say that this election is essentially a choice between World War III and Civil War 2.0, but we think that Trump winning would make it that much more likely that we will get the two-for-one special, barring a miracle of miracles.

And to those who say that their vote doesn't count because it is rigged and the outcome is predetermined, keep in mind that such a thing really only happens when the election is close, and it becomes that much HARDER to cheat when the election is not close.  We still haven't gone so far down the rabbit hole of kleptocracy that we have full banana republic sham elections--YET.  (Though if Trump wins, he could very easily make that the case in the future.)  And if everyone who was eligible to vote actually voted, Trump (and the Republicans in general) really wouldn't stand a chance.

The lesson that should have been learned in 2016:  if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. Seriously. 

P.S.  To all of the young(-ish) Trump supporting men out there who are still smug about Project 2025 because of your gender, race, etc., read the fine print.  One of the things on the agenda is to bring back the military draft.  Seriously.  That means YOU too.  So maybe you might want to reconsider which candidate, and party, you are willing to support.  And to all of the Serena Joy-esque self-hating misogynists out there, who think they personally will be spared, well, remember what ultimately happens to Serena in Atwood's novel.  Don't say you haven't been warned!

Like the song "Freewill" by Rush goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

America's Going Out of Business Sale Has Begun

Well, it's official now.  The Republican Tax Scam has now been signed into law on December 22, 2017.   The TL;DR version:  It is basically reverse Robin Hood economics--rob from the poor, give to the rich, and torpedo what's left of the middle class.  In other words, it's Reaganomics on steroids.

The lion's share of the tax cuts will go to the rich and mega-corporations, while the bottom 99% will get little or nothing, or even a tax hike depending on the exact vicissitudes of where one falls in the tax code.  Small businesses, or at least many of them, will likely get a swift kick in the margins, while large corporations make out like bandits.  And the price tag?  Over $1 TRILLION added to the national debt over the next ten years.   So much for the GOP being the party of fiscal responsibility, right?  Which will trigger automatic spending cuts to Medicare among other programs, unless Congress chooses to waive such cuts.  And it will also provide the perfect cover for Paul Ryan and his buddies pushing further cuts to the programs that they have had in their sights since forever, most notably Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, among several others as well.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Tax Scam also contains a bit of chaos manufacture in regards to Obamacare.  It effectively repeals the individual mandate for Obamacare, without replacing it with anything or doing anything whatsoever to stabilize the markets. Granted, the TSAP has long advocated (until we get single-payer healthcare) replacing the mandate with more positive incentives (such as increased subsidies), more stringent rules for special enrollment, and perhaps a surcharge as well for those try to game the system by dropping coverage and getting back in later.  Even the greedy insurance industry would be fine with such a replacement mechanism to prevent adverse selection.  But this bill contains no such mechanism, so unless something else is done soon, the result will indeed be chaos.

Oh, and to top it off, the bill also opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for "Drill, baby, drill!"  Because we really, really need to rape and plunder one of the very few remaining pristine areas of the Earth, because GROOOOWWWWTH!  Or something.

So overall, this is a very bad deal, and is essentially America's going out of business sale.  But hey, at least we will all get cheaper booze from this, right?