The answers here are unsatisfying. People do not think of themselves as villains in their own story.

Think about how you would frame this if you believed you were doing the right thing.

Solid A grade. Also something I would never write about, which is appealing.

Keep them coming, people.

They're cutting a deal to get them through the holidays. But the damage is done. Republicans will understand what lever to pull now, and it's not about hurting SNAP recipients. They'll find ways to screw suburbanites if we shut down again. In fact, they'll engineer it into whatever law they pass.

You can get away with screwing poor people. You can't get away with screwing people with money. Who buys a plane ticket to see family at Thanksgiving? People with money. Everyone else drives.

Figure 3-4 million passengers, plus the multiplier of their families on the receiving end.

The reduction in air travel was going to start hitting people in the upper middle class - the professional-managerial class citizens whose political support Democrats can't count on as a given, who vote at a higher rate than the middle class, the working class or the poor.

Of course. But there is no universe in which the shutdown ends with universal healthcare as the result.

Trump is doing that because someone quietly informed him that his idea to torpedo the filibuster is a bad idea for Republicans because it will give Democrats everything they want if and when they retake government. Only an assurance that Democrats will *never* win again would assuage GOP senators.

Senate Republicans will cave. They have to. Trump is prepping them for that today. He is posting on Truth Social that the Sen. Bill Cassidy compromise - funding health savings accounts with the subsidy taken away in the OBBB Act - is a good idea.

I have no opinion on it yet. But it's a start.

When Trump goes out of his way to order the Ag Dept. to tell states to claw back SNAP payments somehow, he solidifies the role Republicans play in hurting people in poverty.

I was arguing at one point that Democrats might want to go after the legality of payments to the military. That's easier now.

And since almost half of the people receiving SNAP benefits are children, the shutdown pits 24 million or so poor American voters against 24 million or so ACA enrollees.

Democrats do not pay a political penalty for hurting the poor here, largely because the perception of harm falls on Republicans.

We pretend that social class doesn't exist in America. But there's a distinction between the truly destitute bottom 2% of Americans, the poor (10-12%) and the working class (the next 20-25%). One of them is voting. People in the ACA hole are about half again as likely to vote as people on SNAP.

What do you think about this Bill Cassidy idea to fund health savings accounts with the money that would have gone into the ACA subsidy?

Looks like they killed it.

Us the Incorrect Product Information tab.

www.walmart.com/help/article...

I detest jury nullification. But here we are.