The Down Range Forum

Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: MikeBjerum on November 15, 2025, 06:55:02 AM

Title: Government is back open, BUT ...
Post by: MikeBjerum on November 15, 2025, 06:55:02 AM
The vote passed, the Democrats are refusing to admit they caused and perpetuated this painful month and a half, but their words and rants this week are all the evidence needed to convict them.

As we now enter the phase of final negotiations toward a spending plan and policies (crap that will be tacked on and hidden in the plan) the stupidity will require pain relief.

First step: Excluding a couple of years of "COVID Emergency," we consistently run a $1.5 trillion annual deficit, with this year projected to be $1.8 trillion. Where can we cut the full $1.8 + trillion?

How can we keep handing out billions to other nations for fluff while we can't feed, house, or care for our veterans and citizens that are in true need? How can we give food assistance to our own people that allows them to use the funds to purchase junk food?

I continually here local government complain about "unfunded mandates." Business could say the same when it comes to OSHA and FTC, and many other alphabet agencies. What I would like to see, what I would demand if I was on the floor of the Houses, is require that each spending bill would include not only the amount of spending budgeted, but also how it would be paid for.

My final rant, for now, is the health plan. This is NOT healthcare, and it never has been. It is a medical payment plan that subsidizes higher costs for both care and insurance. Not just insurance to cover the rising care costs, but insurance profits beyond costs and reasonable funds for future shortages. Having lived the farming life for a decade I fully understand how government subsidies do nothing by increase inflation, and it does nothing to benefit the average person receiving the subsidy.

OK, one more rant: Bernie and his comrades are pushing for "Medicare For All," and calling it a single payer plan. I know that many on here are like us and on Medicare. We all understand that by the time you get to December your Medicare portfolio is anything but single payer. The number of policies is worse than before age 65. Also, Medicare is not a cheap program. True, government subsidies, taken from the SS we have paid into for decades helps, but the cost of the policies and the co and deductibles is still there.

DAMN!!! As I reread what I have typed I keep coming up with more items that need to be addressed - Especially budgeted projects that don't get completed on time and that have runaway uncontrolled cost overruns - Like a wife at the mall with a credit card while hubby is on a hunting trip.
Title: Re: Government is back open, BUT ...
Post by: Big Frank on November 15, 2025, 07:06:57 AM
It's government of the people, by the stupid, for the rich.

We don't have a Democracy, Representative Democracy, or a Republic. We have a Kakistocracy, government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.
Title: Re: Government is back open, BUT ...
Post by: alfsauve on November 15, 2025, 07:22:56 AM
Interesting article in the Atl Journal, the-newspaper-formerly-published-twice-a-day-known-as-the-Atlanta-Journal,-and-the-Atlanta-Constitution soon to print it's last edition 12/31, that, and Democrats have said this, Shutdowns don't work, never have. 

But then the only real thing we learn from studying history is that we never learn anything from studying history.

Title: Re: Government is back open, BUT ...
Post by: Rastus on November 15, 2025, 08:23:40 AM
Grifters.  Virtually all of the federal politicians are grifters and lawyers.  Lawyers are legal technicians and are not endowed with some special ability to be the smartest "bestest" authority of all there is on every subject at every time in all places.  In fact, since politics is very much related to the legal technical calling lawyers should be excluded from holding office (howls and cries to follow). 

Where will the cuts focus from the denmoncrats?  Well most likely to those who do not vote for them as punishment.  Demoncrats are not stupid they know what makes a male a male and a female a female but they are under the influence of evil and evil is their master.

Republicans...as a whole have been RINO's which can be further refined into demoncrats that could not get elected without an R by their name.  I trust then as much as a cobra bitch in heat poked with a stick. 

Not all politicians are thieving liars.  Some actually try to do what's best despite having differing views and who sometimes err.  But they have been few and far behind.  Recently we have a few more but with the younger generations filled with mindless communist indoctrination from the public school system I see fewer "statesmen" in the future without some gracious intervention of truth and reality.

I hate hearing about a newspaper closing up.  I realize the internet has done a yeoman's job on cutting into their biz, but I would love to have access to a daily paper that wasn't full of liberal crying wolf bull$hit and baseless liberal indoctrination.  Since an objective and impartial newspaper is something the general public does not have available to purchase, then let the liberal rags die the the slow economic death they deserve and may they drain the money from their liberal owners completely. 
Title: Re: Government is back open, BUT ...
Post by: Big Frank on November 15, 2025, 11:40:08 AM
The Flint Journal, founded 149 years ago, during the U.S. Centennial is still alive but has been on life support for decades. It was formerly 4th largest paid circulation of any evening newspaper in the state. Now it's up to 4X a week after dropping down to 3X from the daily printing it had before. I don't know anyone who reads it anymore, but half of the city does. My friend's mom probably does, just like my mom did. I used to have her save the old papers and used them to clean my guns on.

There were repairmen at work who would knock dings out of body panels like fenders with a metal pecker. I swear that's the actual name of the tool. I can't find one online to show you what it is, but it was used on down dings, not up dings. Then they would file them with a file with widely spaced curved teeth that I think was actually made for use on lead, and "DA" them with a dual-action random orbit sander. The already thin sheet metal was so thin they would gave it The Flint Journal test when they were done. If you could hold the paper behind the part and read it, the panel was no good. :) If it was good, they swabbed the raw metal with oil and put it back in the rack. Or had some schmuck like me handle it for them.