zifnab25 [he/him, any]

Some sources have reported the explosion was a result of a gas leak, however no official cause has been stated as of yet. Dallas Fort Worth has a history of gas explosions after heavy rainfall due to the clay soil absorbing the water, expanding, then contracting, causing explosions.

10 people have been confirmed injured as of publication, as per the Forth Worth fire department.

Loan shark shaking his head and waging his finger at all the predatory loans his neighbors have gotten themselves into.

I was under the impression that the dollar had been hitting peaks it hadn’t seen since the 80s. So this isn’t a downturn as much as it is a leveling off.

There is a party whose population will gladly accept no Medicaid expansion in their state and lose out on public option benefits, because “black man bad”.

I remember when Kentucky got enough blue dogs in office to put the Medicaid expansion into effect. They called their program “Kynect” and did a reasonably decent job of administering it. The program became so popular that Republicans pivoted to “defend Kynect from the federal government!” mode. Its been delivering services for over a decade and is a vast improvement over the deplorable state healthcare system.

Plans to defund or kill Kynect have largely failed and GOP efforts to cut the program have backfired on politicians that tried it, but Democrats struggle to take credit because the savvier Republicans aren’t shy about voicing their support.

So they may be good at saying “No” to proposed legislation, but the GOP is awful at saying “No” to any broad based existing program. Its the same reason they’ve had such a hard time privatizing education even in blood red states.

It will be more insidious and the American people have proven over and over that so long as harming them is packaged with a temporary tax cut or sandwiched between a outrage social topic of someone else to hate; they will keep on voting the assholes back in.

Bush Jr ran on privatizing SS and got absolutely washed in 2006.

Obama ran on scaling back entitlements and got washed in 2010.

Trump beat Hillary in part by cleaving to SS/Medicare and attacking her on her plans to gut it.

Biden is almost a fluke in so far as he’s got an anti-SS/Medi history but finally landed a successful Presidential bid. Even then, without a House willing to do deals, he can’t really touch entitlements either.

The AARP rivals only AIPAC in terms of its influence. Its a classic “do not fuck with the money” situation that also shields the Pentagon and the Financial Sector.

Not to say entitlements are bulletproof, but its been a nut both parties have been trying to crack since at least Clinton without success. Reagan was only able to land a blow by “saving” it with higher taxes and some very lukewarm meddling with retirement ages. Even then, it wasn’t a trick any other President managed to pull again.

Every President promises to reform SS/Medi and none of them do more than tinkering with the margins.

The elected officials who have to choose between tapping into the general fund and telling 70M people they don’t get a full SS disbursement is going to be in a tight spot. Especially when we’re just shitting money over the wall to a dozen ongoing military disasters.

Boomers have been saying this since the 60s and continue to say it even as they cash their latest round of checks.

Social Security is crazy popular. Even marginal trimming around the edges is politically suicidal. The only way to end the program is for Congress to shut down the agency and end the distributions. That’s not going to happen so long as elections are even remotely contestable. Its the third rail of politics for a reason.

I would predict a military dictatorship before I’d predict an end to SS. One is practically a prerequisite for the other, and even then it would be dicey.