The BBB's bigger - and ugliest - danger

I'll just jump right in.

On what they're doing to healthcare alone ...

JD Vance, Office of Vice, called savage cuts to Medicaid and resultant deaths by the tens of thousands "immaterial." From Real America's heartland of humanity, Iowa's Sen. Joni Ernst comforted panicked constituents by reminding them that yes, they might lose their insurance coverage through Medicaid — or for that matter, because of a 75% hike in Obamacare premiums — but "We are all going to die."

Lisa Murkowski, who voted Aye in exchange for a temporary, Alaskans-only exemption from the bill's pain, acknowledged that "in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill" — it seems Murkowski has forgotten that she's a United States senator; she also said she was offended — let me repeat that: she was offended — by a fellow senator's criticism of her vote.

Bigass Ugliest Bill Ever-supporting Republicans usually dismiss their $1.1 trillion gutting of healthcare for the 72 million Americans who won't be leaving their heirs up to $30 million tax free by relying on one of Trump's many lies: "We're not cutting Medicaid"; "People won't be affected"; "[If left in Democrats' hands,] Medicaid is in big trouble."

From whitehouse.gov, there was more: 11 March 2025, "The Trump Administration will not cut ... Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again) — 18 Feb., "Medicaid ... is [not] going to be touched"; 26 Feb., "We're not going to touch [Medicaid]"; and 9 March, "I’m not going to touch ... Medicaid."

(Somehow — strange, I know — none of Trump's false assurances has received anywhere close to the media's jackhammering frequency of Republicans' denunciations of President Obama's "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." PolitiFact — "first announced" on CNN! it proudly proclaimed — labeled Obama's 2013 remark the "Lie of the year." Note: Obama later apologized for his persistence of a falsehood. Show of hands: Who believes Trump will?)

One would be abundantly justified in asking why in the name of political psych wards virtually every elected R of The People, as they cynically enjoy calling themselves, would vote in support of such socially vicious and economically reckless legislation. The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait spent some time yesterday wondering precisely that. His conclusion, however, eluded precision.

Damned if he knew, nor with epistemological certainty does anyone removed from the GOP's inferno of blackhearted malice toward all but the vastly moneyed. "You’d think sheer venal self-interest, if nothing else, would cause members of the Republican majority to hesitate before wreaking havoc on multiple economic sectors," mused Chait. "Yet none of these outcomes has given them pause."

He took a few guesses about why, such as Republicans' rare payments of electoral consequences from their party's catastrophically idiotic leaders in the Oval Office. That, in part, is undoubtedly one answer. Another of Chait's conjectures: "They don’t understand just how unpopular the bill is apt to be when it takes effect."

To that I add: There's no need for them to wait. Also yesterday, Axios posted this (five polls total, these three more recent):

The findings are of no mystery to congressional Republicans; like all pols, they'd take polling results over the day's bread. Republicans are unique only in that they consume public opinion and then ignore it whenever unfavorable to their latest scheme of screwing the shit out of everyday Americans. (Berchestagden sprechenfrau Abigail Jackson told Axios that "it's no shock" that the current bill is "hugely popular.")

Yet the public's uniform unfavorability toward the bill points to a monstrous danger — looming peril not for the sinister ogres shoving the bill's unmitigated hideousness to congressional completion and onward to Der Führer's desk, but to the disapproving public itself. For again we must take note of "Republicans' rare payments of electoral consequences" from their customary catastrophes.

Among the above surveys, WaPo-Ipsos found that "Those who have heard a great deal or a good amount about [the BBB] oppose it by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, 64 percent to 33 percent, with nearly half strongly in opposition." Sounds hopeful, right? But there's a problem. It comes with a massive caveat. "About two-thirds of the public say they have heard either little or nothing about the bill."

Sweet Jesus you can't swing a dead companion animal without slamming the poor thing against headlines blaring in 48-pt. font about the ghoulish legislative beast now stalking us from the very depths of the GOP's vilest personality disorders — and yet "two-thirds of the public say they have heard either little or nothing about [it]."

I wrote this little piece just now while watching the greatest film ever made. Who's who and who's taking the fall? Think allegorically.