• 4 Posts
  • 444 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • $40 billion was the entire annual budget of USAID. No matter what you think of them, they did provided essential aid to dozens of nations, and DOGE destroyed them under the pretense of lowering the deficit. Now we’re spending that much money just to prop up one countries economy.

    (Yes, I know they USAID is a soft-power tool of American imperialism, and is rumored to have been used as cover for CIA operations, but they also did a shit-load of global AIDs prevention work, and I’d rather have spent the $40 billion on that than bailing out a libertarian freak so Rob Citrone can get rich.)







  • I know that was Schumer’s excuse last time, but I’m not sure that really adds up. The federal courts can still fund themselves for a few weeks after a shutdown. Also, the lower courts are slowing Trump down, but the Supreme Court is consistently ruling in his favor. If anything, he should want the courts to be running as quickly as possible so he can keep appealing and getting the Supreme Court to overturn all the restrictions the lower courts are placing on him.

    Plus, while ICE is being designated an essential agency and ICE agents are expected to fulfill their full duties during a shutdown, they do it without pay (and get back-pay when the shutdown ends). That’s not a big deal for a week, but if you stretch a shutdown out for a month, that starts to hurt. I’d like to see how loyal Trump’s dogs are when they’re not getting fed.




  • You have to remember that Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s/50s. He would have encountered holocaust survivors on a daily basis. For guys like that, Israel represented a safeguard against the possible extermination of their people. The fact he’s gone from being broadly supportive if Israel (though being pretty critical of the Netanyahu government) to admitting that this is a genocide shows pretty huge growth.