"Welcome To TACO Hell!": US POLITICS, JUNE 2025

<ERIC ANDRE GUN MEME>

"WHY DID ROBOT BIDEN DO THIS?"

it's some real dem grand strategy shit, is making a robot that shits the bed and doesn't recognise George Clooney!

Step 1: replace Biden with https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=92365

argh

In September the deep state killed Biden for the very first time

Now he’s a robot
It’s June

Times
Times

I am the Biden man

(Secret secret, I’ve got a secret)

Robot Biden is two trochees, like ninja turtle, zombie vampire, or Jesus lizard.

https://xkcd.com/856

Looking up at a TV playing the local news, and they're actually using graphics calling it "The Big Beautiful Bill" ffs...

Which Ohio diner are you in?

That’s what it’s called!

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/fema-head-wasnt-aware-hurricane-season/

Good luck to all on the east coast

He was just having a little fun while doing his job—dismantling the agency.

FEMA = Feverishly Eliminating Most Americans

assholing for assholery's sake

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename an oil ship named after gay rights activist Harvey Milk, a move that pointedly comes at the start of Pride Month.

Military.com first reported the impending name change, citing a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy. The document reportedly showed that the service planned to strip the oiler USNS Harvey Milk of its moniker...

‪Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli‬
✧@bandite✧✧✧.o✧✧‬
· 55m
Minneapolis residents running ICE/DHS out of town so hard multiple police agencies are lying about what really happened while DC Democrats give Republicans free TACOS really does show the difference between the party base and the party infrastructure, doesn't it?

c'mon call him out by name

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/elon-musk-trump-spending-tax-bill-disgusting-abomination-rcna210690

game recognize game

But Musk won't call out the tax cuts he's getting or the Medicaid cuts

After seeing his work on the DOGE I'm guessing he isn't objecting to extending and enlarging the tax cuts of 2017 for the wealthy. The "abomination" he's thinking of is the failure to make massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Exactly. The Medicaid cuts aren't big enough for him.

Marjorie Taylor Greene - Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years.

I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.

This section was in non- Maga news coverage, but she didn't see that or read the bill

tbf, the bill was withheld from most of the members of Congress until the last moment before the voting and was well over 1000 pages.

and it wasn't in pop up book format

Pretty sure MTG can't read, period.

really hoping this Musk sniping on the spending bill eventually transforms into a full-blown, drug-fueled breakup of the bromance, with lots of mutual mudslinging and cheap insults

it almost seems inevitable

He knows he needs the MAGAs to keep Twitter usership levels from shrinking, so as of yet he hasn't called Trump out by name, probably is egotistically hoping that someone as brilliant as 'him' giving the hint is enough to get the big man to stop listening to the morons around him.

so I guess we need someone to create an index that hypothesizes what the stock price of Twitter and Tesla would each need to decline to before he finally takes gloves off.

IDK, don't you think a full repudiation of Trumpism would ultimately be the best thing for his brand? Liberals could maybe talk themselves into buying a Tesla again

But I guess the Federal contracts is where the real money is, especially with Starlink etc

if he's going to do that, he needs time to pivot. that crowd still makes a huge chunk of his enthusiastic user base.

feel like the Tesla brand is pretty much shot barring him selling the company outright

Xp — there were drafts of the bill for weeks — I spent an hour or two skimming and making notes — someone whose actual job is to vote on legislation should have at least done that?

well yeah but they are not actually opposed, it's just cover for voting for unpopular horrendous things to say they wouldn't have voted for it if they'd known

welp, when the bill comes out of the Senate and goes through reconciliation, she can see if that provision stayed in the final version.

She might not remember to check though, which is totally valid. Who has time, really?

Yes this is a gift link to an Atlantic story — but it's a good one, called "Feudalism Is Our Future."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/07/government-privatization-feudalism/682888/?gift=83kOO-_pxHChnfcCXfgpODcYwIxBDk3wsibK8lRrGXc&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Public police forces with a mission to protect everyone are largely a 19th-century invention. But police forces are shrinking. In the U.S., anyone with money and a need now hires private security guards, who outnumber police officers by a ratio of 2 to 1. Among companies based in the U.S., the third-largest global employer—after Amazon and Walmart—is a private security firm, Allied Universal. Private guards patrol small towns and swaths of entire cities. A consortium of hundreds of businesses in Portland, Oregon, hired a company named Echelon Protective Services to secure their downtown precinct, day and night. During the fires that devastated Los Angeles in January, the wealthiest residents of Brentwood called in the secretive security firm Covered 6 to protect their homes from looting. As for personal protection, the market has no ceiling. Mark Zuckerberg’s reported annual budget for personal security is $23 million, five times more than the pope pays for the Swiss Guards.

As in medieval times, the affluent withdraw behind barriers. If it were built today, Windsor Castle would be described in the sales prospectus as a “privately governed residential community.” In the 1990s, when the economist Robert Reich began writing about “the secession of the successful,” some 3 million American housing units were lodged inside gated communities, which protected a population of about 8 million. Today, gated communities encompass 14 million housing units. On its website, a real-estate company in Florida earlier this year asked readers, “Is a Moat Right for You?” It was an April Fools’ joke, but not a very good one, because modern moated residences already exist. Perhaps the most exclusive gated community in the world is actually an island—Indian Creek Village, in Biscayne Bay, Florida, with 89 residents (including Jeff Bezos, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner) and a perimeter-security radar system designed by the Israeli company Magos. Officers in speedboats intercept anyone venturing too close.

Privatization has also upended the law. One example from an ambitious survey by Robert Kuttner and Katherine V. W. Stone in The American Prospect : the growing use of compulsory arbitration, written by corporations into private contracts, as a way of settling consumer and employment disputes. The public court system is clogged. Arbitration—the “outsourcing of jurisprudence,” as the authors call it—creates a parallel private system, one in which efficiency may be more highly valued than public oversight or due process.

Oversight more broadly—of the environment, food, drugs, finance—has been drifting for decades into the hands of those being overseen. In their 2021 book, The Privatization of Everything, Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian documented the loss of public control over water, roads, welfare, parks, and much else. The deliberate dismantling of government in America in recent months, and its replacement with something built on privatized power and networks of personal allegiance, accelerates what was long under way. Its spirit was captured decades ago in a maxim of Ronald Reagan’s economic adviser Murray Weidenbaum: “Don’t just stand there— undo something!”

so ruthlessly priors validating that i don’t think i should read it and don’t know if i can endure a worst outcome experience tbh

police forces are NOT shrinking, wtf

the rest of that is otm but...

IDK, don't you think a full repudiation of Trumpism would ultimately be the best thing for his brand? Liberals could maybe talk themselves into buying a Tesla again

He's not cynically exploiting the fascists, his daughter transitioning (and years of drug abuse) just broke down all the walls that stopped him from talking about it in public. He can't repudiate his soul (such as it is).

My city’s police force has shrunk, but they are now raking in even more $$ on overtime.

This based on BLS data says total police declined slightly from 2012-2021, so with population growth police per capita is down a little. Police everywhere are having a hard time recruiting, fancy that.

https://www.safehome.org/resources/states-with-most-police/

I'm talking about budgets, not actual #s of cops, like that might be true that actual #s are down but it feels disingenuous and unrelated when police budgets are like literally 60% of some larger cities

TLDR ACAB

Oh yeah I thought it was already known that police depts have been using ever-increasing budgets to pay offers MORE, not to pay more officers. (Cf the prior statement about recruitment, and I can't remember where I saw this so it might have been specific to the NYPD.)

Sure, still plenty of cops to show up in riot gear when needed. I think the bigger point is just that there are twice as many private security guards.

that's fair but I don't think it should take away from the "defund the police" discussion

iow framing this as "private cops are replacing public cops" is inaccurate and misleading in terms of actual economics and budgets, give that public cop money to the damn schools if all we have are private cops now

I chuckle at the idea that lawmakers of the richest country in the world would approve a bill 1000 pages longs, knowing where it came from, without reading any of it. What exactly wouldn't you do to prove your loyalty, suck his d. ?
I also can't get over the fact that media is using "BBB" with a straight face. Big and beautiful, seriously ?

On the private security guard thing, the ratio is some other countries can be 4 or 6 to 1 police. It's a 20-yo global trend.

xp some ppl want to build back better tho the better business bureau has beef with this bs

Good morning,

That Cullen Murphy piece is very good (and I say that as someone who avoids the Atlantic), thanks for posting it. I'm somewhat bemused he never says the word neoliberalism, but maybe he was intentionally avoiding it.

It pairs well with this Defector piece on Bitcoin: https://defector.com/what-world-does-bitcoin-want-to-build-for-itself

Democrats do want to win....their own races, at least.

best job ever, all you have to do is set up robo-emails to ask for $5 and pick a tie in the morning

a lot of the people I am friends with do a Che Guevara impression online but in reality, they're still the same person who would have voted for Michael Bloomberg in a primary back in 2012.

I dunno, people can change. Anyway many Dem voters really honestly do want progressive things then do the Keynesian Beauty Contest thing in the primaries and not vote for the candidate they actually like but for the candidate who they think other people will like.

with Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?

‪Joe Katz‬
✧@joekat✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 16m
John Fetterman when asked about timing of vote that will cost millions health care and food on the table, destroy industries and jobs:

"Oh my God, I just want to go home... I've missed our entire trip to to the beach."

It is noon on a Monday.

they're still the same person who would have voted for Michael Bloomberg in a primary back in 2012.

the guy who spent a billion of his own dollars to win 2% of the delegates in 2020?

Hey, he won American Samoa

"Oh my God, I just want to go home... I've missed our entire trip to to the beach."

Senator Clockwatcher

Ugh I’m sorry but I wish fetterman would just die

his mind is considerably damaged and it's not even in question

i mean, i'm sure chuck and the rest of those assholes are thinking the same thing, "this sucks wish i was at the beach"

Ugh I’m sorry but I wish fetterman would just die

Oh don’t be sorry, everyone I know in PA wishes the same thing.

xpost

…shit has probably changed more in the last 20 years than any 20 year period in human history. I'm not sure if the GOP realized this after Romney or if they were just particularly ripe for getting taken over by a rich loudmouth bully. The Dems don't seem to get it at all though, they still trot out Bill Clinton at the DNC, they keep pushing 80 year old candidates who are missing votes due to illness and got to the point where they had to replace their presidential candidate mid-election because his brains fell out on live television.…

― frogbs, Monday, 30 June 2025 15:47

What specifically do you think has changed so dramatically in this millennium? From here it looks like more than anything Twitter has been the most significant agent of change. Not Twitter alone but it how much of the major political campaigns and even social movements have gotten going. Obviously at this point it’s mostly run its course as a bellwether but now we’re seeing corporate social media’s predominance in politics mainly as a vector of information pollution, targeted disinformation, propaganda — whatever you want to label it.

Cui bono? Does this information pollution more benefit political conservatives or actual progressives? This effect is key to an accurate framing of our current trajectory.

I don’t even know what I was trying to say with that one sentence, I think you get my drift though.

well, medication and treatment of heart disease has undertaken great leaps and bounds in the last 20 years and smoking has greatly diminished in the same period. half of the geriatric congresspeople would have been dead at the age they’re at in y2k

Pork has also been banned in the congress since 2011.

if this is real and legal it seems really bad

Trump’s justice department issues directive to strip naturalized Americans of citizenship for criminal offenses

Memo says those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases

The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.

The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.

Fucking grim.

yeah, they've given up all pretext of going after the 'illegals,' now it's just any undesirables they want to throw out... this is some serious Nazi-level shit, and I don't throw that word around lightly

(maybe this belongs in the doomposting containment thread, IDK)

No, that's not doomposting -- this is real!

and this: forgiving an actual criminal's offenses if he testifies against Abrego Garcia... they REALLY REALLY want to pin something on him

Court records show that the Trump administration has agreed to spare from deportation a key witness in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García in exchange for his cooperation in the case.

José Ramón Hernández Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally re-entering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to “deadly conduct” in connection with a separate incident where he drunkenly fired a gun in a Texas community.

they'll just get his testimony and then deport him anyway

I hate Newsom a bit less as of a couple days ago when he reversed his decision to cut a program that supports employment for mostly low income arts workers.

No, that's not doomposting -- this is real!

a what point does the doomthread will become the preferred reality?

not until total inversion is reached - there will be a "goodposting" thread and anyone in the doomworld who dares to suggest that something good is happening will be ridiculed as unrealistic and generally unhelpful to everyone

then we revert to Negroniposting

done and done

Good dooming!

🍸

Man, I had a really interesting experience today, and I don’t know exactly how it relates to everything else going on, but I drove away the hell out to middle of nowhere Basile, Louisiana, home to a giant ICE jail f
for women. The SEIU bused in union members from all over the country to demonstrate in front of it. It was a super weird scene, it was a permitted demonstration, and the cops had blocked off the road so they could safely stand in front of the facility. But they were given exactly 1 hour– even the media was told we all had to be back in our cars and on our wayby 2 PM sharp. It was hot as fuck of course, in the middle of the day, and there were maybe a couple of hundred demonstrators. On one hand it felt like the ultimate drop in the bucket, what were these couple of hundred (mostly non-white) union members up against this giant private prison facility and about half of the local sheriff’s office out there keeping an eye on things. But it still felt good, people had really put a lot of effort into getting there and showing solidarity.

Red state union members are some of the best people ime

This was the detention center where Rumeysa Ozturk was held fwiw. Smack in the middle of Cajun country. Was hard not to think about the Acadians driven out of Canada by the British who fled and settled there. And now they work at an immigrant detention center. Ain’t that America.

the bloom is definitely off the bromance: Musk now threatening to fund primary challenges to any Republicans supporting the Bad Bogus Bill

Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!

And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.

have at it, bro

Elon Musk, welcome to the Resistance

he's also babbling about how we need a new party, which I also support: siphoning off the crackpots for a dead-end game

Call Trump a pedo again, loser

The Party of No Pedos (They can have one...and it's Elon!)

so why specifically does Elon care about this

Elon is enough of a mark that he freaks out about the deficit

Are there cancellations of EV rebates in the bill?

Yes!! No more tax credits for Tesla buyers

lol

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump said. “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

this might be a good time to revisit all the people that are getting more subsidy than any human in history, by far

hmmm ok that explains it, those tax credits are pretty much the only reason to buy a Tesla

haha yes

is that a real Truth post or AI?

if it's what you say I love it

It's July.

oh no

noooooooooooo

The paragraph about the guy looking at photos of his penis: US POLITICS, JULY 2025