Doom Report (Week 24: Another Rough Week)

Everyone else has come up with their funny takes on the ridiculous name of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—from the “One Big Ugly Bill,” which just feels lazy, to the “One Big Bullshit Bill,” which is only mildly better, to ever more convoluted wordplay—but so far I haven’t personally settled on one.  How about ... the “Outlandish Bloated Beastly Buttfuckery”?  What—too much?

Well, in case you still don’t have sufficient concept of just how bad this will be, Hank Green has a good explainer on its financial impact, while John Oliver on Last Week Tonight explains the rest in his inimitably entertaining fashion.  Meanwhile, Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse on the Coffee Klatch this week give even more context, including making the point that the (at least!) 11 million people who will lose access to Medicaid won’t actually lose it until after the next mid-terms, which is a level of political cynicism that’s shocking even in today’s climate.

And, since this bill will make ICE’s budget bigger than the entire military of Israel (and, excepting only 15, every other country in the world too), Jesse Thorn recently repeated his call to donate to Al Otro Lado, which I originally reported on in Week -4.  Especially if you both feel helpless to effect any change and also have some money to spare, please consider donating.  It could mean the difference in people getting lawyers or being held in concentration camps.

On Election Profit Makers this week (jump to around 28:45 for the exact quote), David Rees used the OBBB as the backdrop to the the juxtaposition of Mamdani winning in NYC and Jeff Bezos’ conspicuous-consumption wedding.  It’s quite a contrast between the class strata in our country.  As David put it:

... this budget is the perfect document that kind of summarizes, or codifies, the vibes that we get when we see a socialist win the primary in New York and then we see Oprah Winfrey and Ivanka Trump having fun at a foam party in Venice ...

It’s a startling mental image, for sure, and reminds us that Left and Right is not nearly so interesting a division in our country as Ultra-Rich and Working Class.

Other things you need to know this week:

• Be sure to check out the Zeteo panel on the deportations in LA.  Mehdi Hasan hosts Brian Tyler Cohen, Van Lathan, and LA city councilwoman Nithya Raman.  Among many others, Mehdi’s comment on masked ICE agents is quite incisive: “Am I the only one who thinks it’s absolutely insane and also weirdly hilarious that the people who screamed about not wanting to wear masks for 5 years are now wearing masks all the time?”

• Speaking of masks, Spencer from Legal Eagle does a deep dive on the legality of mask-wearing by law enforcement.

• Also on Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan interviews Brad Lander about the attempts to smear Zohran Mamdani with charges of antisemitism.

• Michael Ian Black (now of the American Have I Got News for You) had a great video this week on the Daily Beast where he explains the bizarre position that MAGA has put us liberals in: while we want to be the iconoclasts, now we’re reduced to defending the institutions: USAID, the IRS, the Post Office, etc.  Weirdly, we’ve become the conservatives.

Not a whole lot of room for hope this week, sadly.  The best I can muster is this: in the Zeteo video I mention above, Van points out:

We’re living in times of kidnappings and gulags.  We’re living in times of bodily autonomy being gone.  We’re living in genocidal times.  We’re living living in times of blockades and starvations ...

And, while it’s not a direct response to the above, I can’t help but find this exchange between Mehdi and BTC a useful and inspiring counterpoint:

MH: What advice are you giving them when you’re doing your monologues, when you’re interviewing people?  What do you
want them to hear?
BTC: Fight, fight, fight, fight.

Good advice, if difficult to follow.  Still, one could do worse than to donate to Al Otro Lado, and prepare to fight.