According to this, 21 trillion is a good chunk of change and Trump could give $116 billion to the rich in tax breaks along with another $20 trillion we could 'afford' by Trump's estimation to give guarantees to Argentina and we are getting $205 billion from the tariffs so far. Since we have so much money to give out, where's our single payer health coverage that all the rest of the first world countries have?

A 656 CC engine? Geeze, my motorcycle engine is bigger than that. To be honest I miss my small sized economy pickup truck. While it would not be competition for the Acty as far as capability goes, it was never meant to be, designed for a different market.

What I liked about the compact pickup, was gas mileage, cheaper to fill because of a smaller gas tank, and yet you could haul a bit of stuff with it. Today's monster sized factory pickups are not what I need nor what I desire. I want a truck that costs less than $20 to fill up, gets around 30 mph on the highway, and is not designed to move a house, just maybe a run to the grocery store for several months of groceries at one haul. Nor did they cost $50K+ to buy one new.

There is but one reason they use apps like Whatsapp. It's an attempt to get around Federal Records Act and in doing so not leaving a record by which they can be held accountable.

The Federal Records Act states:

Congress deemed federal records worthy of preservation for their "informational value," and also because they document "the transaction of public business" and the "organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government." The FRA requires executive branch departments and agencies to collect, retain, and preserve"or dispose of"these records.

Get out the micrometer, someone's gonna need it for actual measurements once they get in to the prove it stage.

Why should any of these workers want to return to the chaos and moral dumpster of the government work place? I understand the financial need to have a good paying job but not being valued for doing your job leaves a big hole in the self-esteem. That eventually wears on a worker to realize they are not valued for the contributions they make towards the whole of the task. I'm sure it would not be long before the crying over lost workers turned to the attitude of "We can replace you very easily".

The heads of these government branches were not confirmed for their expertise but rather for their loyalty. Loyalty does not necessarily mean competence as we are seeing from the result of the change in administration and who they put into those slots. There is a constant 'egg on the face' from those in charge of those branches and it results in the CYA of it rolling downhill rather than sticking to where it really belongs. Again another wear on the moral of the employee.

I'm 100% positive I would not want to be a government worker in today's work place.

You know, Trump's deterioration is Biden's fault. /s

This dissatisfaction with how things are going and how little the congress critters pay attention to their constituents has been going on for decades. Deep displeasure with the rich donors getting what they want while ignoring the public that politicians need to stay in power.

Add to it in those same decades, the inflammatory rhetoric that has been used by both parties, has not helped the public. Compromise to get things done is now pretty much a dirty word. When the political body does not do for the public what they were elected for, it breeds ill will and this has had decades to simmer.

One more thing to put in the mix. The younger generations are seeing they can't achieve the American Dream. The deck is stacked against them. They feel they've been lied to and are the generations that will never achieve what their grandparents had. No matter how hard they work, no matter how hard they save, they can't reach the same standard of living. That too inspires hate and ill will. At some point it comes to a head and public figures are what they see to blame for it all.

I also suspect that this Grand Jury records release is merely an attempted distraction from the release of the Epstein Files.

I feel the same Lamplighter. At any time Trump could have ordered the release of the records. Instead he's done all he could to prevent the release. I also expect that any Republican mentioned will be inked out while any Democrat will have their names in the clear.

The Grand Jury won't have the real good stuff, that is not the purpose of the Grand Jury, which is merely to find out if there is enough evidence to have a trial and not waste the courts time. The well known clich is a Grand Jury will indict a ham sandwich, meaning there doesn't have to be a lot of evidence provided.

"He said his party was working with the White House to reduce this burden by "giving money back to the American people to purchase their own health insurance at an affordable cost"."

It was doing just fine until Trump needed money for his Big Beautiful Bill that needed funds from somewhere and the Repubs agreed to rob Medicare to fund the tax breaks for the rich. They now realize it's costing them their political future. That and Trump's tariffs have pretty much put the economy into a K shaped one. While the rich have been holding up the economy for now, that won't continue because the bottom end of the K are the ones that keep the economy afloat; it's a matter of numbers and the population as a whole spends far more than the fewer rich.

You can witness a politician jumping through hoops when their future is threatened and there is no one to blame for this medical disaster of costs except for the republican party that took no suggestions from the Democrats and rammed Trump's bill through. Giving money back isn't going to help, it will not even be pennies on the dollar in help and the people still have to buy their insurance from the same places.

Then, let's finally create a system that puts your health over corporate profits.

We need Medicare for All.

It's called single payer and as long as profits drive health care it will never happen. The medical industry will turn heaven and earth to protect their profits. We are the only first world country without it. Both our costs as well as our poor record of health care are a direct result of for profit health care.

"Here ya go bro.
archive.ph

You can give that dollar to the homeless."

#3 | Posted by donnerboy

Ty every much.

Trump has figured out he can't gaslight the economy when people know what's coming out of their wallets. Happy talk on the economy doesn't work when people know what they are spending and aren't happy about it.

Since he can't pull that off, the next best thing is to hide the evidence. Then there are no uncomfortable government facts to get in the way by his thinking. It won't help him, economic data will be provided by independent parties. If the data made a great upturn, you could be sure there'd be official data on hand to show.

As it is, he's made a mess of the economy and it's coming home to roost.

It's paywalled, $1 to keep reading.

First thing both Trump and Hegseth did, was to make sure the lawyers who could tell them it wasn't legal to do this or that, weren't in the room and the second thing they did was start removing those who spoke up. Then there was no one to tell them it was wrong to do what they wanted.

Hegseth and a lot of his underlings in the chain of command will no doubt be facing charges.

There's a reason Trump wants gerrymandering done. Because if he loses, not only does his whims not carry through without a complaint, if voting goes the way it has shown to go but he will likely be up for impeachment yet again for the illegal acts he's been actively wanting and doing. Of course if no one brings it up then there are no charges for the actions and if they do bring it up, there's no way it carries through in congress with all branches under control of the Repubs. He loses that, he's in trouble for his unchecked actions.

The reason Hegseth doesn't want survivors, is there is no one to speak up about them not being drug runners. They've already destroyed the evidence so legal cases can't be brought up that stick. That means it's useless to bring a survivor but for charges that's been fished out of the water. According to a news outlet, the coast guard has a 20% chance of stopping a boat from drugs and finding none. That means if the same ratio holds true then 20% of those boats destroyed aren't drug runners. You certainly can't question those that were hit if they were and there's no evidence to show they were. So it's all misdirection with people dying no matter who they are. They can't even provide names of those they blew up.

This has long been known that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved with 9/11, from diplomats to funding of terrorists housing and flight school.

Said they'd likely be held up because of the Democratic investigation he directed Pam Bondi to start back around the 14th or so. Sort of knew this would come. The question will be how it is released. How much black ink will be used to cover over things or what will be held back. Everyone knows there's a reason Trump doesn't want to have those files in public hands.

I think that Trump vetoing the Epstein bill remains a possibility.

#2 | Posted by Zed

He can approve it and it will still not be released. Remember him telling Bondi to investigate the Democrats over Epstein?

""It jeopardizes future federal investigations, and we have national security concerns regarding classified information," Johnson said of the bill."

The DOJ will say that national security will prevent the releasing of all files. There will be some either not released or altered.

It is very likely, those files have already been scrubbed to remove Trump and the Republicans.

Have a feeling Trump has been holding this as a trump card in case the Epstein thing got out of hand and he needed another distraction.

Trump has directed Pam Bondi to investigate the Democrats who might have been involved with Epstein. This strongly smacks of corruption as the DOJ is supposed to be independent from the Executive. It is not POTUS that determines who will be investigated, that's up to the DOJ. It appears Trump is once again, trying to run some misdirection as he isn't interested in what Republicans might have been involved with Epstein, only the Democrats.

Biden never released info because at that time the case was under investigation and cases under investigation are not talked about while evidence is gathered to prevent spoilage of the evidence as well as prevention of witness tampering.
Trump has continually blamed Biden for anything and everything, so he could see himself as blameless.

This also could set up blockage of the Epstein release of files from the DOJ while they too claim the investigation is ongoing, even though Republicans are supposedly left out of the investigation. Again, it looks like Trump is either trying to shield himself or he is trying to shield his mega-donors and the wealthy who might have been involved. Either way, it sets up a clear case of cover-up, where the more Trump is involved and comments, the more it looks like he has something serious he's afraid will come out and and is trying to hide that info from being released. The more he tries to misdirect the more he digs himself a hole in involvement.

Trump claimed he parted with Epstein and he hadn't spoken to Epstein in 15 years, which would have been 2004. Yet the release of some of Epstein's emails showed that Epstein had attended Thanksgiving Dinner at Mar-a-largo in 2014. There's a lot that's off in what Trump claims and what appears to be facts.

You can add my name to the list. 82nd Airborne, Army.

Monday I had the honor of being one of 62 who did a motorcycle escort for the moving Vietnam Wall. It is now set up for visitors. Tuesday I joined a ceremony for Veterans Day.

Happy b'day, LauraMohr.

I heard from an elderly lady, she said "Don't get old, you won't like it". *smiles*

The vote will likely go against the Dems unless some of the Repubs up for re-election join in. If it goes that way, there will be a lot of voters against the Repubs. They will seal being the losing party should it fail to pass.

Something else in Walmart's offer is that more of the goods use the store brand 'great value' rather than premium goods to reduce the cost. They didn't do that last year.

The Repubs have had at least 10 years to present their so called replacement for ACA. They speak of there being one but no one has seen it, in all likelihood because of the great PR it would put out, means it doesn't exist as a plan.

Trump's idea of sending out $2000 checks from the tariff income, doesn't sound good at all. Remember the last time Trump halted the sending out of checks so his name could be on the reprinted checks? What happened after that? Inflation happened with a vengeance. So much unearned money had been dropped on the public, to spend as they wished, but there was no increase in output of factories and the like to increase available products. It takes time to ramp up production and get it to the market. Trump's idea of sending out checks will likely result in the same increase in inflation all over again.

His idea of sending money out to the public to replace the ACA stinks as well. The public still has to buy it's insurance from the same insurance companies and the amount that goes to the public will be no where near what it will take to buy coverage. Not even a decent sized bandaid to help out. This too would add to the inflationary push.

Repubs know, even if they don't admit it, they are in a nine line bind. Their political fortunes depend on selling a pigs ear as a silk purse and it isn't being taken so well by the voters and they are saying so with their votes.