Dr Ooze, said in a speech that Americans were on track to lose 135 BILLION pounds before the midterms. 135 billion pounds? Wonderful! We’re EACH going to give up around 400 pounds. Actually, I’m a little concerned. I confess, I carry a little extra wight – but not 400 pounds! For most of us, losing 400 pounds is like the Dumbass insisting he can lower drug prices by 1,500%. First you get to zero, then you keep going.

This regime just LOVES to make up numbers and they MEAN for the made-up numbers to be as impressive as they can be. THAT means BIG. The numbers have got to be BIG. If the numbers are BIG, the achievements are big, too, right? So Donny can’t just lower drug prices by 100%. Anybody could do that. (They can’t.)

It’s GOT TO BE 1,500% to impress MAGA, and Dr. Ooze isn’t impressing anybody by claiming Americans will merely lose 40 pounds each. Who could be impressed by THAT? No, it has to be 400 pounds because that’s a bigger number. Idiocracy, thy name is America…

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Well, there’s talk of a plan to end the shutdown. It comes out of the Senate. It would have to since the House has gone walkabout. It appears to have support from enough turncoat Dems to pass the Senate. It does not include the health insurance subsidies the Dems have been holding out for. The Senate’s Republican leader, John Thune, has promised he would allow a vote on a bill to deal with the credits by the second week of December.

He won’t. The GOP has gone so far as to withhold food from hungry people in an effort to put pressure on Democrats to surrender their demands. “You want health care? STARVE, peasants!” Now, all of a sudden, they’re going to just get reasonable and do the right thing? Uh-huh. You bet our lives!

Even if Thune does do the right thing, MAGA Mike the Johnson has said he won’t bring such a measure to the House floor. Besides, how can he bring anything to the House floor when the House Republicans are out quivering in their hidey-holes, fearful of having to address the problem of Donny’s very close friend Jeffrey Epstein in public and on the record.

My feelings on the topic were best summed up by Greg Casar, chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus. He said: “A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them. Republicans want health care cuts. Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise – it’s capitulation.”

I guess it’s back to desperation catastrophic coverage and preexisting condition denials for “The Land of Opportunity™!” A citizen of ‘The Greatest Country On Earth™?’ These days, I feel more like a victim…

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Have you SEEN the ramping up of disdain from all corners when it comes to Democratic Socialism? If you’re a talking head on American television, left or right, you MUST come out against Democratic Socialism. It’s BEST if you also mischaracterize Democratic Socialism. Call it Communism, that scares ’em!

I heard Bill Maher talking about how it never works, socialism. That’s wrong. He MEANS communism. Right now, the happiest, the freest, the most successful (if you measure success by best-serving the largest number of people) countries on Earth are Democratic Socialist. The act that made America great in the first place was FDR sprinkling in elements of Democratic Socialism to the US as a way to stabilize normally erratic so-called “Free-Market” Capitalism. He called it the New Deal.

This latest round of pearl-clutching started because Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, just became the mayor of New York City. The so-called “Free-Market” Capitalists run scared every time socialism rears it’s head. The thing is, socialism rears it’s head from time to time because it seems to be a better system and the masses keep figuring it out, then figuring it out again.

Mamdani once said in passing during a speech in 2021, “But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel), right, or whether it’s the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”

“Ooh, he said, ‘…seizing the means of production,'” terrified Capitalists cry, “He MUST be a commie! If seizing the means of production means one MUST be a commie, look to Donny, who just strong-armed his way into a deal giving the US government a stake in Intel. And MP Materials. And Lithium Americas. And Trilogy Metals. Not to mention the US government’s “golden share” of US Steel Corporation. Apparently, we’re communists already, da comrade?

Here’s what all the naysayers have in common: they’re all rich. Okay, maybe not rich rich but they’re doing very, very well, compared to most of the regular working stiffs. Pick a system, any system. The people who are doing well in that system probably like it very much. Why would they see problems? The very BEST one could hope for is a flaccid acknowledgement that it could use some “tweaks” here and there.

The thing people have to understand is this: Democratic Socialism is a capitalist system. It’s just controlled Capitalism. Those of us being crushed under the weight of so-called “Free-Market” Capitalism think it could use a little control…

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The Niners had a football game yesterday. Somebody should have told them. It looked like the team failed to show up so the coaches went into the streets and grabbed up anybody they could find who might fit the uniforms and put them out on the field. They played accordingly. If the game HAD been played by amateurs, well, they did a fine job. Hats off!

But if the people who showed up for the Niners identify as professional football players in the NFL? They might not want to tell anybody for the next couple of days. Maybe, let the memory of that stinker fade a bit. The Rams were firing on all cylinders and the Niners were still looking for their keys.

It seems strange, but that loss put the once-first-place Niner’s playoff hopes in jeopardy. They still have a winning record. They’ll still show on the “in the hunt” sections of playoff predictions. But the NFC is very competitive and the Niners are trending in the wrong direction. With their defense collectively in the Intensive Care Unit, they don’t have much hope of turning things around. RATS! Oh well. There’s always next season. Always. Next season…