On today's episode of FAFO

June 30, 2025

It’s a long one today, because there’s lots to cover that you need to know about.

No one’s really talking about this, and I don’t know why. I suppose it shouldn’t shock me, but it does. So last Wednesday, Il Douchey (the man infesting the Oval Office) was in the Netherlands and in a press conference, said that he had given Iran permission to bomb one of our air bases in Qatar, the goal of which was to retaliate against our bombing their nuclear sites because it’s not like they’re going to turn around and say “Thank you sir, may I have another?” And here’s the quote: “They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock okay?’ I said ‘it’s fine.’ And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.”

The Commander-in-Chief admitted this, with no shame or hesitation. That’s beyond dereliction of duty. That’s yet another charge of treason to be lobbed at this venal, grasping, useless, pathetic pile of protoplasm that is the Antichrist and the worst thing to ever happen to this country. Giving an enemy carte blanche to fire on our soldiers. Just that easy for him, because they’re all just suckers and losers, right? We intercepted some communications from Iranian leadership, who maintained that the U.S. strikes caused less damage than they had anticipated and wondered why the strikes were so “restrained”.

Going back to another one of his attempts to sell this country’s soul down the river with the Big Bullshit Bill, which is still in the Senate’s vote-a-rama, Sen. Lisa “Janus” Murkowski (R-AK) messed with the tar baby that is the bill and oh boy did she get tangled up. See, Janus was apprehensive about the bill’s plan to gut Medicare, and, worried that she would be a “no” vote, the bill’s authors carved out some special exemptions just for her: revised language that made Alaska eligible for waivers from new SNAP work requirements for “able-bodied” adults without dependent children. GOP leaders also increased a rural hospital relief fund from $15 billion to $25 billion and made other legislative changes to provide more money to Alaska’s hospitals and health care providers. And there was a provision to let whaling captains write off $50,000 in expenses.

She’s cool with screwing over the rest of the states but not hers. Janus is on board with the bill now, right?

Enter the Senate Parliamentarian. The parliamentarian ruled that the boost to the federal share of Medicaid for certain “high-poverty” states, which happened to be Alaska and Hawaii, did not comport with the Byrd rule, which requires everything to have a primarily budgetary purpose. That would have increased Alaska’s federal share by 25 percent. In addition, a boost to health care reimbursement payments for Alaska and Hawaii for hospital outpatient services was also tossed. They threw Hawaii a bone too; since it’s also a noncontiguous state, it was added to these so Senate Republicans could make the case that they were not singling out Alaska; that dog did not hunt.

Whoops. Janus did vote to advance the bill, but its actual passage? No telling what she’ll do now. Fall into line and vote to decimate her state? Now they can keep it in the bill, which means it goes through the regular process, requiring 60 votes to pass, or they cut her special provisions out of the bill. Along with the provision that would sell off public lands, and the provision to protect Il Douchey appointees from contempt charges. This bill is a tar baby for anyone who tangles with it. Does that make Pee Wee German (Stephen Miller) Br’er Fox? With the GOP becoming Br’er Rabbit?

The vote-a-rama went on all last night. They may vote on the bill today, or maybe sometime tomorrow.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has announced he’s not seeking re-election and consequently gives zero fucks. He’s publicly trashing the Big Bullshit Bill on the Senate floor, saying “Between the state-directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this bill, there’s a reduction of state payments and then there’s the reduction of the provider tax… What do I tell 663,000 people in two years, or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys? The people in the White House advising the President, they’re not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise… It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room… where he said ‘We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs.”

See what he said there? He publicly admitted, on the Senate floor (so it’s in the record) that this bill will gut Medicaid, despite the GOP party line that ‘tis merely a scratch.

And even Faux News is getting into the act, airing a poll that, as Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins said, “We’ve got a whole bunch of polls that show that this thing is not popular. I’m not talking about the farm part specifically. I’m talking about the Fox News poll, shows that it’s under 40% approval. When you look at the Quinnipiac poll, the Pew research poll, these are all showing that few people favor this thing. 38% favor on the Fox poll. When it comes to the other ones, you can look at the Quinnipiac poll, that one has 53% opposing it… Here’s the thing. A lot of Americans don’t like this, even some people who voted for President Trump.”

The bill? It’s going to be death by a thousand cuts. Il Douchey says “We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you’re not going to feel any of it.” Bet you ten bucks he said that to Stormy Daniels, too. The Senate version of the bill will add even more to the deficit: $3.3 trillion over ten years. (House version would have added $2.4 trillion) It strips health insurance from 11.8 million people; House version strips it from 10.9. What will happen is that the subsidy for any ACA insurance will be gone, and those on Medicaid will lose it.

How’s that going to work? Instead of flat-out cutting benefits, the bill will make benefits much, much harder to get and to keep. There are so many changes to dates and deadlines and requirements and rules that result in millions fewer Americans getting assistance by drowning them in paperwork and red tape. So… if they aren’t cuts, how is it that they’re able to come up with a trillion dollars?

I realize that every day is the Bad News Bears but let’s look at all this mishegoss from a sociological perspective. What does all this infighting tell us? Well, one, that the GOP is not unified, much as they love to pretend that they can goosestep with the best of the Nazis. And it also shows Il Douchey’s declining influence. Yes, he still has influence but it’s fading. His threats don’t have any teeth to them—he threatened Senator Tillis who promptly said he wasn’t going to run again and leaving the space open for a Democrat, and the 250 up for re-election in the midterms realize that if they vote to pass this bill, they will pay a deservedly heavy price for it. Even they know that there are far more of us than there are of them, as seen with the No Kings protests, and they know they won’t be protected much longer. They’re in thrall to a jaded mandarin who is declining rapidly. How rapidly? He had an interview with Faux News’ Sunday Mornings with Maria Bartiromo and, despite their best attempts at editing, it, well, read for yourself: “Trust but verify, but we’re making unbelievable this.” They had to cut it there. Here he is talking about Iranian uranium enrichment: “Enrichment doesn’t mean like air conditioning and it doesn’t mean to jack up your car, if enrichment is a bad word.” Like he even knows what jacking up a car is, much less has he ever had to do it. I have. You have. But not our tiny-handed fuehrer.

He could not complete one thought, much less a sentence. So the GOP has glued themselves to his coattails and are riding them straight down into a special circle of Hell that Dante created just for them.

“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” II Corinthians, 11:14-15

That’s all I have for you today, kittens.