Ol' shoot 'em in the leg

[Mongrel]

This is just a great picture is all.

[atog]

Biden stiffened in terror as the flashbacks began.

He lay strapped onto a table, gagged and drugged.

The Dragon God entered him from below, sliding, twisting, turning his massive bulk and length in the nooks and crannies of Joe's plumbing.

A ninja, in celadon-green mask, cap, and gown, leaned over him, blocking the piercing light.

"Your colonoscopy showed no abnormalities, Mr. President. As soon as you're more awake, we'll go over the discharge instructions, including how not to stick your head up there quite as often."

[Mongrel]

Politics is politics and politicians talk a good game; it's what they think is their trade after all. But sometimes the real bare-knuckle shit comes out, and wow.



(I'd say nobody is so suicidally stupid as to cut that shit, even in the US, but you really can't say that these days can you)

[nosimpleway]

All they have to do is start referring to it by a name they made up that references something the voting base unconditionally hates, and they'll have the usual frothing support for it.

See: "I didn't want 'em to cut the Affordable Care Act, I wanted 'em to cut Obamacare!"

[beatbandito]

You don't cut Medicare and SS, you just gut it. You cut medicaid.

[Thad]

All they have to do is start referring to it by a name they made up that references something the voting base unconditionally hates, and they'll have the usual frothing support for it.

See: "I didn't want 'em to cut the Affordable Care Act, I wanted 'em to cut Obamacare!"

Doesn't work as well when you do something to piss off AARP and every other lobbying organization for elder care.

There aren't many groups that have more pull with old white people than Fox News. But you start talking about cutting Social Security and you bring down basically all of them.

[Thad]

Biden administration says schools may bar trans athletes from competitive teams

God dammit.

[Cait]

The critical analyses of the legalese I've seen say that's willfully-selective headline manipulation and the actual text is bringing it in line with other Title IX protections along the lines of "You can ban a trans athlete IF you can somehow prove there's no other conceivable way to accommodate them. BTW, here's a list of excuses that won't fly and why", but it still gives the opportunity for manipulative optics.

[Thad]

Still seems ripe for abuse by the states, but I guess if it's an overall improvement over where things were a week ago, then that's at least something.

[Mongrel]

So Tara Reade just defected to Russia.

[Thad]

Biden-Harris Administration Begins Discharges for 804,000 Borrowers with $39 Billion in Automatic Loan Forgiveness as a Result of Fixes to Income-Driven Repayment Plans

tl;dr after SCOTUS threw out the previous student loan forgiveness plan, Biden pursued another tack. This one's not as comprehensive as the previous attempt, but if you've had 20 years of student loans and have paid them on time, you might be eligible.

“Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is beginning to discharge loans for 804,000 borrowers who never received the forgiveness they rightfully earned through decades of payments,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “We are standing up for borrowers who did everything right, but whose progress toward forgiveness went uncounted due to past administrative failures that the Biden-Harris team has worked tirelessly to correct. From day one, President Biden has focused on fixing the broken student loan system, and we will not back down or give an inch when it comes to fighting for debt relief for working families.”

The discharges are a result of fixes implemented by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure all borrowers have an accurate count of the number of monthly payments that qualify toward forgiveness under IDR plans. These fixes, which are the implementation of the payment count adjustment announced by the Administration in April 2022, are part of the Department’s commitment to address historical failures in the federal student loan program. These failures caused qualifying payments made under IDR plans that should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness to go unaccounted for.

Borrowers are eligible for forgiveness if they have accumulated the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years of qualifying months. Borrowers will be notified directly by their servicers via email when their loans have been discharged, and all qualifying loans will be discharged over the coming weeks.

My wife received notice this week that hers have been discharged, which is a pretty big relief. I've got savings, but the adoption has wiped out about half of them and paying off those loans would have cost us the other half.

[hngkong]

Ugh, I should qualify for that. But then again, I should have qualified for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness but despite sending the forms basically days after they opened the expanded version during COVID, they only marked my form as received days before the due date for the expanded version and nothing since.

What I'm saying is, I'm not hopeful.

[Thad]

Also: The 10 drugs up for Medicare price negotiation have seen steep price hikes

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the 10 drugs selected for the first round of Medicare price negotiations, established under the Inflation Reduction Act. All but one of the announced drugs were among the top 25 costliest Medicare Part D prescriptions in 2021. An analysis by the AARP released earlier this month found that those top 25 drugs had price increases that, on average, tripled their list prices in their time on the market and far exceeded the rate of inflation.

[Thad]

Biden’s New Student Loan Forgiveness Program Announced — Who Qualifies?

This latest loan forgiveness attempt, which focuses on negotiated rulemaking under the HEA, could potentially provide debt forgiveness to these five groups, according to U.S. News & World Report:

* Borrowers whose balances are greater than what they originally borrowed
* Borrowers whose loans first entered repayment decades ago
* Borrowers who attended education programs that didn’t provide “sufficient financial value”
* Borrowers who are eligible for relief under programs such as income-driven repayment but have not applied
* Borrowers who have experienced financial hardship and need support but whom the current student loan system “does not adequately address”

The issue paper, published on the Education Department website, also addressed federal regulations that might allow an agency to “compromise a debt” if the government can’t collect the full amount. Reasons include the following:

* The debtor is unable to pay the full amount in a reasonable time, based on financial information
* The government is unable to collect the debt in full within a reasonable time by enforced collection proceedings
* The cost of collecting the debt doesn’t justify the enforced collection of the full amount
* There is “significant doubt” concerning the government’s ability to prove its case in court

[Thad]

Biden administration cancels student loans of more than 150,000 borrowers under new plan

A borrower can qualify for the forgiveness if they're enrolled in the administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan and "have been making at least 10 years of payments, and have originally taken out $12,000 or less for college," a White House fact sheet said. It also said that "for every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, a borrower can receive forgiveness after an additional year of payments."

[hngkong]

It also said that "for every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, a borrower can receive forgiveness after an additional year of payments."

Oh, cool, unless there is a cap on total number of payments before forgiveness, I'm still going to be paying until I die.

[Friday]

So, correct me if I'm wrong here and this isn't Biden's fault and the republicans are forcing him to supply a genocidal regime with money and bombs, but like, this is the by far biggest "criticism" of Biden's presidency, right? Assuming there's not some reason why Biden is completely powerless here.

Honestly, this isn't sarcasm. I don't know the inner workings of the government, the hows and whys, so I want to be informed properly before I go to my irl friends (who have supported Biden all along) and tell them that their rock star is a genocide-enabler.

[Mongrel]

Support for Israel runs deep in US politics for a bunch of reasons, as I'm sure you know, and for someone of Biden's age, who remembers the Yom Kippur War, Seven Days war, etc. that's a real tough habit to walk away from, though he seems to be wavering and it's no secret that he really hates Bibi, a number of other member's of Bibi's government, and especially settlers.

It is fair to say that Biden's probably harder on Israel than any past American president has been (no other president has ever sanctioned Israeli individuals, IIRC), the problem is that this is still far too weaksauce.

Ultimately, I think he's just got an inaccurate idea of just how racist and bloodthirsty a large proportion of ordinary Israelis have become - he's still in the "bad apples" frame of mind. Whether this is willful blindness, hopefulness, or whatever is kind of academic.

He's is arguably better than LBJ was on Vietnam, at least (which is probably the best comparison in this situation), in that he's actually moving towards ceasing support for Israel, slowwwwwly, but I don't know that he'll get there, or actually bring them to heel. My guess is no, or not until it's too late [Editor's note: It's already too late, bub.]. Also, I'm not sure he can stop or reduce the aid money because it may be a congressional thing/part of the annual budget, but he doesn't seem inclined to, so no credit there. He definitely could have refused the ammunition export permit.

So I would say you're absolutely correct, that he's complicit in and assisting genocide, but your friends are not completely in the wrong in that there's some reason to hope, so try not to go too hard on 'em unless they want to be especially boneheaded. I don't think abrogated friendships and division over here will help any of the victims over there.

[Friday]

I'm not gonna break up any friendships, I just want to have the proper information when I point my finger at Biden. It's a given that the United States government is enabling (not just complicit, but enabling) an active genocide, and all my friends are on that page already. I want to know, with precision, what Biden is capable of doing (and not doing) so I can accurately criticize him specifically. For example, in Ukraine, it was easy to point fingers at Biden for ceasing support, but as you yourself pointed out in your op-ed, in that case his hands were pretty much tied by the law. And he wanted to but the republicans are thwarting him.

What I want to know, exactly and specifically, is how tied his hands are when it comes to Israel. I want to know this not really to "win an argument with my friends", but because I want to educate myself and them and anyone else who asks.

And like, if the answer here is "I don't know how tied his hands are" that's fine.

[beatbandito]

Jeff Bidet is okay with the situation in Gaza because he is a lifetime segregationist and both supports the genocide of muslims, as well as wanting all jews to leave America and go to Israel.