|
Thoughts On The Shutdown
What was the point of the government shutdown?
Caveat – I have not followed the issue in depth. My understanding is that the Democrats blocked the funding of the government because they wanted additional money for one of their healthcare programs.
Trump used the time of the shutdown to further his politics.
Six weeks later, just as the public was turning against the Republicans, the Democrats caved in:
The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end Wednesday after the House approved the Senate-passed funding package, and President Trump signed the bill into law.
The legislation extends funding for most agencies until Jan. 30 and includes three bills that fund other parts of the government through September 2026.
The Senate approved the legislation on Monday, when seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats joined Republicans to end the standoff in the upper chamber. Six House Democrats crossed the aisle and voted to reopen the government.
The only thing that the Democrats have ‘won’ was a promise to put the additional healthcare money to a separate vote:
Eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to reach a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown, dashing the party’s effort to win an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits in return for their vote to reopen the government. ..
As part of the deal, Democrats secured a promise to hold a vote next month on the tax credits, which help millions of Americans pay for health insurance premiums for plans purchased on state exchanges.
The Republicans will of course reject that measure.
By the way: Why were the tax credits, part of Obama’s health care reforms, time limited in the first place?
To hide their utter defeat the Democrats released a slew of Epstein emails with the hope to plant new sensational rumors about Trump. I have found nothing remarkable in that stack.
If this looks like a second Russiagate its because it is similar bullshit.
Instead of being a real opposition to Trump’s wars and miserable programs the Democrats’ are pushing performative nonsense.
Do they expect to get votes for that?
@ 42
Russophobia, as real as that is, is just a manifestation of the enduring racism which has animated European politics since the age of colonialism. Indeed, the British, French, and Germans have long viewed Russians as sub-human (the way they get away with calling Russians “orcs” is insane to me, the new “political correctness” is the dehumanization of the national enemy). But it’s not just the Russians they view that way. Remember that EU bureaucrat who talked about the “jungle” of the outside world and Europe as a “garden”? The race hatred is used to animate white riots against refugees from wars which European powers play an active role in, against Russians who are attempting to flee Putin’s mafia state, and here in the US, against Latin Americans who are trying to live in the core of the empire instead of the significantly more violent periphery – more violent because of US imperialism, sponsorship of dictatorships and drug cartels which fight left-wing freedom fighters like the EZLN. And who does it distract attention away from? Our pedophilic and degenerated ruling class, who are busy jerking themselves off to fantasies of “AI” and “superintelligence”.
The media of course plays a major role. Lies from big politicians are simply not called out. JD Vance went on TV yesterday and said, in effect, that Latin American immigrants are the reason why housing costs so much in the US – perfectly mirroring the claims made as late as 1938 in nazi Germany that the Jews were at fault for the German housing shortage! He wasn’t called out on that lie, or for the historical parallel (Vance knows what he’s doing because his political base is the white supremacist wing of the GOP). No one asked how that could even be the case. In the first place, “illegals” can’t get mortgages without either a social security number or individual taxpayer id number, and because these immigrants are undocumented, they can get neither. This forces “illegals” into sub-standard housing rented out to them by slumlords who know of the immigrants’ precarious position and use that to their advantage. The solution to our housing “shortage” is to radically expand public housing, to build a million new units a year, not to kick out millions of our fellow workers.
But white skinned identity politics is still on the rise. You get laughed at nowadays if you suggest, correctly, that we are all human beings who deserve dignity and who should have our fundamental human rights protected, especially our right to move where we damn well please without the interference or permission of the ruling class and their lackeys in the government. Europeans and white USians are fanatically attached to white skinned identity, and who is or isn’t “white” is always up for debate (unless, of course, you’re black-skinned). Russians aren’t white, but Ukrainians are. Spaniards, who are darker skinned than the Russians, are somehow white, at least relative to Latin Americans, whose indigenous heritage has to be examined. But you don’t have to get the calipers out: it depends on who’s at the top of the capitalist hierarchy, who’s making the money, and who stands in the way of the white-skinned elites’ domination of the planet.
The biggest peril to whiteness so far has been “yellow peril”, because, as it turns out, the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese are pretty good at this whole capitalism thing, too. And those dark-skinned people in Africa don’t have a history of violent colonial dispossession with those powers, at least not yet, so they tend to prefer working with the Asians (it helps that the Chinese offer them better deals – 70+ years of Communist Party rule has kept the kibosh on doctrines of Han supremacy, at least, so the Chinese tend to approach the Africans as people and not as chattel or burdens). The imperialist war between China and the white elites is going to be sold to the public through a doctrine of race hatred, which we are already being prepped for by the media.
My suggestion? Stop paying attention to media outlets owned by the bourgeoisie. Help support cooperative and socialist media projects. Because it’s socialism or barbarism.
Posted by: fnord | Nov 14 2025 17:46 utc | 50
|
