Bullshit. Rand Paul like the other three Republicans that voted against it were allowed to vote against it because they are otherwise in vulnerable districts and could face a primary Challenger or even a viable Democrat. Paul especially because Kentucky has a Democrat Governor.

The Republicans do this every time they do something really horrific to americans. The wider the margin they have in Congress the more horrific the thing we get.

They know that the bill is insanely unpopular. Every forum I go to is filled with people over 55 that are on disability talking about how they're going to die now. There's a bunch of people retired who are talking about how they're going to be homeless soon because they're social security payments are getting cut. There's a whole bunch of nastiness in that bill to take money away from vulnerable old people, many of whom voted for Trump.

So the Republicans will figure out who is the most vulnerable Congress member and tell them to vote against whatever horrible thing they're doing.

Rand Paul has been playing that fucking game for decades and you people have been falling for it. You never learn because you simply aren't capable of it. It's not really your fault it's not like you can Will yourself an extra 100 IQ points anymore than I can. If I could wake up tomorrow and be two or three times more intelligent so I could be above all this crap I would.

It's frustrating to be just smart enough to know how fucked I am and not smart enough to be able to do anything about it.

Any Republican that crossed him and he has more than enough money to do it. He could replace every single Republican in the House of Representatives if he wanted to and he wouldn't even break a sweat.

Mark my words in a few months as a rider on a bill he will get his subsidies back long enough for him to extract all the money from Tesla with that pay package of his. He needs just a little bit more time because he's finishing up the paperwork after buying a law in Delaware that will let him avoid the lawsuit that stopped the pay package last time.

If you have Tesla stock then you either need to sell it right now or you need to take an enormous risk. Because as soon as musk gets that 55 billion dollar pay package Tesla is going to be effectively broke and the stock is going to collapse. No amount of dangerously stupid self-driving cars will fix that

Slashdot doesn't ban people. It just lets the mod system make you invisible. You're thinking of Reddit. You are also a bot. It's so weird bots still waste time on this dying web forum. I'm assuming it's because the site is in a list somewhere because it used to be a bigger deal.

It's not his fault. Hunter biden's laptop had Hillary Clinton's emails on it and that made him do it.

Which white necessary for passing the bill.

In other words the ones that could conveniently and politically be allowed to vote against the bill for show.

The bigger the margin you give the right wing extremists the more shit they can do to you to hurt you because the more of those vulnerable senators can vote for nasty shit. Same with the House of Representatives.

Deficit spending isn't a problem. 80% of it goes directly to the American people with another 20% borrowed overseas.

The stuff that we loan ourselves is just money supply. There's no issues with it as long as you're not giving it all to the 1%.

The reason you're seeing inflation is your taking all that borrowed money and giving it to about 2,000 americans. They are then using all of the money you gave them to buy up their competitors and jack up prices. That's your inflation.

As for the 7 trillion or so we overseas we could pay it off anytime we want by repealing Trump's tax cuts for the rich and instituting single-payer healthcare using the $500 billion a year in savings.

But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, we do not want to do that.

America uses that debt to artificially boost the value of the dollar. That lets us import goods for a fraction of their actual value. If you're a Warhammer 40K fan and you've ever ordered something from Japan or China because it's cheaper over there that's how that works. If you've ever looked at the price of a gundam model kit and said wow that's cheap that's how that works.

That's just a nerd stuff we import trillions of dollars of goods. We come out way way further ahead than the interest we pay.

This is a classic Chesterton's fence. It's a system that you don't understand so you are demanding it get torn down without understanding it.

I think the kids call it, fuck around and find out. Or FAFO.

Our monetary policy is the velvet glove on the iron fist of our military.

We use our national debt to artificially prop up the value of the dollar. We then use the high value of the dollar to import trillions of dollars in products for a fraction of their actual value increasing your quality of life. That giant SUV you bought? That's why you can afford it.

Donald Trump and the Republican party are breaking down all the systems that made that possible. As a direct result of this your quality of life is going to collapse.

There is absolutely no stopping at this point. The economy is going to collapse shortly after the mid terms. You need to start getting ready for it now. Because it's never going to get any better.

The American dream is now to die before the worst of it all hits.

Corporate fines don't work because they are a fraction of the profits. Going after individuals will just mean going after low level people because the problem here is we have a ruling class and we don't like to admit it.

There are some marginal gains in terms of climate change for a electric car but they are pretty marginal. Electric cars not only don't stop climate change but the false impression that buying one helps is making things much much worse.

And I know nobody here likes to hear it cuz it's a guaranteed way for me to get modded down but most of the pollution coming from cars is from their tires now. I mean no kidding we've had zero emissions cars for something like 25 years now.

But every time I go outside I get a nice long full of tire particulate. I mean, didn't anyone ever stop to wonder where are tires go when they wear down? Did we think the tire fairy was taking them?

I don't like electric cars because they're a cool neato technology that encourages us to avoid solving real problems. Nuclear is the same way. Nerds love nuclear and they love electric cars because it feels like progress when really it's not.

And that's the last thing anyone wants to hear.

As if replicating Norway is somehow a bad idea, or that Norway is somehow a villain for exporting oil.

Funny how /. attracts the lowest quality trolls.

There's this bullshit lie again. Trolls are nothing if not ignorant copycats.

Smog is not tire particulate and EVs are only incrementally worse with tire wear, but better with brake pad wear. They sure are great at getting liars out to spread FUD though.

To be fair maga kills everything. The phrase everything Trump touches dies predates his first presidential run.

That's the problem, something this large it's going to crash the economy this hard should have had a big campaign to sell it to voters. They aren't planning on having elections anymore.

The Republican party just does whatever their billionaire rulers tell them to. There was never any doubt that they would vote for the bill and there was never any real holdouts just people posturing so that you'll vote for them in the midterms.

What I'm saying is I never once saw anyone in the Republican party telling me as a voter how and why this big beautiful bill was going to make my life better. They literally do not give a shit what I think because they're not planning on allowing any of us to vote anymore.

Is legendary among the Republican party for tutting and then voting for whatever horrifyingly terrible thing will hurt her constituency the most. The same goes for Susan collins.

It's like an especially cruel game of Charlie Brown and Lucy football.

If you look at their voting record under Trump they voted with him 95% of the time. The remaining 5% they got picked as the slightly more vulnerable politician. The Republicans picked four of them this time cuz that's how many they had and let the VP break the tie so those four can swear up and down they didn't vote for the bill

There is absolutely nothing left in the Republican party or the right wing except hatred, greed and serving the billionaires to see which one of them is going to be the first trillionaire. You cannot be a good person and be a Republican.

You can be an absolutely fucking clueless person, you can be a democrat, or you can be a terrible human being. Pick one.