1. The BBC will not disappear. 2. Risk aversion, especially towards events in the US, will mean BBC journalism will play down or misread key trends in American politics until long after they are obvious to everyone else. 3. Pissed off BBC journalists with a grudge are now a threat to all sides

You keep on trying to make the point that the presence of cheaper alternatives somehow makes premium options unavailable. And that simply isn’t true. Good premium products still exists and can be purchased. Anyways, having lots of consumer options are good. preview.redd.it/reaction-of-...

Supportive of the initial caucus as I am, and though I am doing ok, I cannot pay my mortgage with determination

aside from the politicking, take a stroll down any of the fed employee or services related reddits and see how bad it is.

I think getting paid to work again would be pretty nifty, idk

I’ve pinged around a bit today to plugged in sources in and off the Hill (both parties), and the initial read I’m getting (in some cases unexpectedly) is the movement is real Now, that a diff than a done deal or that it’s irreversible esp if there’s suddenly a surge of pressure, but I think it’s a…

But there's also families who are basically enrolled successfully into a forced savings program which is kind of the cornerstone of the American social safety net. It comes down to the numbers.

So here we're in the realm of trade offs. There's a marginal family that loses insurance because they needed the premium assistance to get insured and don't expect to consume those costs, and some fraction of those hit a five figure + medical event.

This whole fucking shutdown has been that Inspector Clouseau against all the assassins scene. Yeah, Dems are doing all sorts of dumb stuff. Republicans, meanwhile, are inventing new and exciting ways to machinegun each other in the nuts.

This can't possibly be something Senate Ds, even moderates, are agreeing to. Not only terrible policy but you couldn't possibly just switch to this on a dime like that, major implementation issues setting it up. And ACA 2026 enrollment already underway!

I think people are looking at this as game-over rather than halftime despite everyone involved saying it's halftime. they could be lying, of course! not discounting that! but we shouldn't assume it

if the break is as reported- a short term CR- seems like we might want to do this again in January

if there's one thing that's even better than setting up a new mechanism to administer a country's health care system during open enrollment for plans that are going into effect in seven weeks, it's the experience of submitting receipts for your $1800 insurance premium to your FSA portal every month

But here's the fun thing: they're not sending actual money. They're sending credits that will be a goddamn nightmare to actually cash.

Forrest Gump brilliance here, tbh. A completely idiotic idea that nonetheless gives Trump enough rope to hang himself with all over again, because he will 110% fuck this up, and because ppl will resent the higher bills more than they welcome the subsidy.

This is a great way to create a huge administrative clusterfuck that makes ppl even madder.

Videos like this make me think it's a miracle ICE doesn't shoot a couple dozen unarmed people per week.

Videos like this make me think that miracle is not long for this world.

if this keeps up, the planes will all be flying low and following the railroad tracks or interstates. Just like the days of Herbert Hoover.

Looks like this is real. About 40% of the flight at 8k feet, then bumped up to 10k, and then finally went up higher, but only to 20k feet. Much slower than normal flight and likely burned a lot more fuel. But the view out the window was probably impressive. www.flightaware.com/live/flight/...

The events of this Fall in Congress are best thought of as a single seamless clusterfuck in which Mike Johnson singlehandedly finished off the GOP Congressional Majority as a functioning organ of the regime.

Making Mike Johnson choose between refusing an actual surrender and getting the Epstein Files vote he dreads is quite the dilemma. I actually have no idea what he'd do.

I think if senate mods want to break, they will break, but it's really important they do it without cover from the caucus or leadership

imagine if the federal worker protection stuff loses the House Freedom Caucus lmfao

there is a non-zero chance that the House GOP refuses to pass the Senate CR and that would be absolute cinema if after 60 dem votes they still can't approve it in the house

At this point, it’s utterly bonkers that any Democrat would trust any Republican to negotiate in good faith.

"Please let us do things that facially violate the Constitution. This other judge dared to forbid us, so you need to fix that."

If you compare the purchasing power of US households to any other industrialized country it’s off the chart but any change to it is disastrous made because survival services and goods are a component of that and their restriction a profit driver.

It’s the classic story that US healthcare is incredible at very niche hi tech things that cost a lot but is terribly inefficient and high cost in basic medical care.

just to review, last month: 🚩 musk calls for overthrow of uk government & violence (again) 🚩tories adopt an ethnic cleansing policy 🚩 trump wh bullies bbc into changing leadership

illinois!durbin is 202-224-2152; "experiencing high call volumes" but keep trying and in the meantime send an email pronto www.durbin.senate.gov

My last line on my email to my senators was that if they caved, my monthly donation would evaporate.

Yeah this is a good idea. Anyone who tries to give up for this little needs a wake up call.

If Yglesias is in Resist Lib mode, you've really damn fucked up.

This seems significant

if you’ve lost MattY and Torres your deal seems kinda bad imo

certainly seems like something is going to happen given the sheer number of congressional reporters posting about it, so I guess we’ll see just how bad the deal actually is if it’s really just a promise of a vote, time to make a lot of lives miserable

it’s very difficult at this point to figure out if there is actual movement towards a Dem cave or just a Republican whisper campaign to Axios to make it seem like there’s a Dem cave and I’m going to hold my fire on any of it until something actually happens (or not)

Even if Dems cave, Trump is gonna shoot the SNAP hostages anyway, which is going to do immense political harm to him regardless. Yes, it will be dumb on Dems' parts. But it also won't matter very much.

The US government is trying as hard as it can to ensure that Americans starve. The USG is threatening states that are trying to help.

You see it in last Tuesday’s elections. It felt like the 2006 midterms. Bush Jr‘s and the GOP’s political domination were seen as unbeatable until then Now? No one speaks his name and I bet you can’t recall the names of any of his close allies who would succeed him. Trump will share this fate.

The stove touching was built in the moment he was elected. We don’t need to be vindictive or Doomers. Trump did what we knew he would and we are seeing the consequences we knew we would all have to bear One of those is the right’s coalition falling apart. You see it in Heritage Foundation war

Senate probably also thinks this is a master stroke of politics to put it on the House and lol.

Pretty sure this is an effort to force the House to re-open by the senate crafting its own solution (the merits of the solution are a sep discussion). Which would be interesting given it hasn’t been in session since September and any new bill would have to go through the house as well.

The quiet part out loud here is that there’s probably a couple members who would admit this change is about the fact that their flights might get impacted. Few things move Congress like airline status.

It is so scummy that Fetterman turned off his voicemail months ago

this is because 1) vibes are subjective and 2) someone can have the affect of something bad while being another bad thing entirely

re: Anakin is a school shooter so the Jedi didn't fail him and it's just doing the "poor wittle white male" thing first off, people likely did fail most school shooters at some point, people aren't in fact born evil (most sociopaths both were failed + aren't school shooters) second, HE WAS A SLAVE

Having "school shooter vibes" does not make one a school shooter, which is a critical distinction a lot of Bsky misses

(I will also quietly note one more time that every single person insisting the Dems had SO MUCH LEVERAGE should probably be asked to list all the meaningful policy gains the out-party has ever won in a shutdown prior to 2025, including when operating with *majorities*. Hint: the answer is 'zero'.)