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Cake day: August 14th, 2024

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  • The Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) handles:

    • Medicare
    • Medicaid
    • the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
    • the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance Marketplaces

    They are also in charge of:

    • Setting the health insurance portability standards for the United States
    • The administrative end of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
    • Setting the Federal quality standards in long-term care (nursing homes)
    • Clinical laboratory quality standards under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) of 1988

    So it’s not just Medicare and Medicaid, but millions of people within the ACA and including seven million children in CHIPs that he’ll be overseeing. Not to mention setting the standards of care for millions of people in nursing homes.






  • The postrat folk. The deep value Silicon Valley folk. Core Techbro kind of people.

    Would have thought they’d be prone to sticking with Musk

    Ditto, but at the same time. Being with daddy Musk might be too traditional at this point. No idea the reasons, but you can to see a lot of this popping up in that circle on Twitter.

    TPOT → Bluesky is actually an interesting example of what looks like a successful transplantation… quasi-existential concerns about Elon Twitter, vibes have been off leading to big cascades of migration tend to happen after inciting incidents (eg twitter banning substack links being a canary in the coal mine)

    You know the “I sound super thoughtful” kind of stuff. Lots of praise from that Group on XTwitter/Bluesky.



  • That’s not the victory Republicans will think it is.

    The House Freedom caucus routinely has at least one or two who dig their heels in over “this bill doesn’t go FAR enough!”

    With a 218 majority, that means 100% of the Republicans have to toe the line. Not a single person can be out of line, something that rarely happens with either party. There’s usually at least ONE person who doesn’t like the outcome.

    This is going to put a lot of people who are known for digging in their heels into very precarious situations. Either they toe the line and have to accept some compromise because of Democrats in the Senate looking to filibuster. Or they alone hijack the Republican plans.

    And woe if someone dies, gets sick, or retires in office on their side, something that also happens at least once per year on either side.


  • Yeah. We don’t have anything in place for this kind of thing, so we had to rely exclusively on things we use for corporate litigation and what have you. The whole impeachment, that’s about it as for what our founders created to protect us and if Congress doesn’t exercise that power, well this is what happens. That whole argument way back “the courts will settle this” from the Senate that gave him a pass, that was the Senate knowing they failed and trying to pass the blame elsewhere.

    Trump got away with everything because the actual few protections we have, the people entrusted to use those powers lacked the spine to actually use that power. Cowardice is how we got here. A short but important line of defense was entrusted to weak minded people and so they failed at every step of the way.

    Perhaps we will one day fix these shortcomings. Maybe. But this shows that if we give power to weak individuals that will put wealth, power, and their own interests over the rule of law, then we don’t have a country. The Constitution is only a sheet of paper if we do nothing to enforce it.





  • Worse yet, Sen. Lee’s recent pitch is “get rid of the FED and then… well we’ll just figure it out after that.”

    Like literally, the main person behind this has zero clue on what they would do after getting rid of the FED. So not only would they in a single sweep up end the entire US dollar and all the global markets that have built around it. They have absolutely zero plan for what comes next.

    Like you could not pitch a “let’s fuck everything for the foreseeable future” plan any more than Senator Lee’s current idea of how to “fix” things. But I mean dude clerked for Alito in the third circuit, so I mean, shit doesn’t fall far from the asshole.



  • WHAAAAATTT?!

    Rubio? Dang. That’s a choice. There’s Romney, Paul, Barrasso, and Cruz that are some heavy hitters on the Committee on Foreign Relations and he went with Rubio? I mean shit, Rand Paul is who I would think would slide the best into Trump’s Sec. of State. There’s likely no one for Sec. of State that’s on Foreign Rel. that’s been more meticulous about the southern border that him. Additionally, the man is an easy pick for if you wanted to have someone sign a giant check from the US Treasury to Israel in the amount of ALL dollars.

    Rubio is a bit more slow paced. Don’t get me wrong, he wants a wall just as much, but he’d likely slow walk it to allow it to gain heavy media traction. Paul would just be like “Give me some fucking bricks”.

    is viewed by State Department officials as unlikely to overly politicize the role

    That is a massive understatement there.

    All I have to say is color me surprised by the choice. I mean, obviously Trump is going to tell Romney to eat shit, but shit if Foreign Rel. is where Trump was going for Sec. of State, I would have surely thought Paul would be a a perfect fit to Trump’s mannerisms.


  • Dems Should Steal It Back.

    Or you know, Bernie should just have it and everyone should stop stealing it. I mean I’m as liberal as they come, but c’mon Democrats, stop stealing Bernie’s shit and leaving him behind and just listen to what Senator Sanders is telling you will actually win Americans.

    I mean, I get it, I’m bummed about Trump, but shit, PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING THIS CYCLE DNC!! I mean there’s a ton of reasons for why Trump won, but holy fuck, Democrats if you could run something just few nanometers short of the current level of insipid political rhetoric, that would be amazing.

    I’ll still vote Democrat on the mid term, but c’mon drink a Red Bull or something.





  • While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.

    Goddamn this hits the exact thing that Democrats really need to learn.

    There’s a ton of emotion in this nation. Given:

    • The opioid crisis where the people responsible are in perpetual litigation.
    • The wars we fought that costed us deaths of young people who had lives ahead of them, and scarred millions more. All so that a few rich asshats could profit.
    • The corruption of large companies as they swindle the working class, only to watch legislators continue to profit off of insider trading.

    And that’s just to name a few. There’s a ton of emotion in this nation. And Trump, for better or worse, taps into that emotion. The cut and dry democrats, they keep telling us, “The system will work, this time” and you have a public that just screams “well how soon is now then?”

    Democrats cannot just keep tapping on the system as it currently stands when the system so obviously doesn’t deliver. There are hungry democrats looking for change to the system to form a more better system that will serve them, and the party just keeps dressing the bones of the long gone bird from days long pass.

    Sanders fucking sinks the nail in a single stroke of the hammer on this. And Republicans are using that emotion, that pent up distrust of the system as it is, to move people in their direction. The entire point of this living government is to have a government, to have a system, that matches the people who are alive and having to deal with it. Sanders sees that and cut and dry Democrats keep going “but Trump will ruin the system that doesn’t work for you!!”

    Goddamn, one day, they will learn. Democrats will pick up on what Sanders is saying one day. But holy shit, they are going to clearly take an incredibly long and winding road to get there. I don’t agree with where Republicans want to take us. I don’t agree with how Republicans want to get there. But goddamn, we’ve got to hand it to them that they’re actively pointing out the exact same thing the Sanders is pointing out. “Status Quo ain’t going to fucking work anymore.” The sooner the traditional Democrats learn that, the faster they can come back to being relevant.