Shit, you’re right. We can’t have that. Can’t wait to watch read about Josh Hawley breaking Booker’s new record with a speech about how freedom of religion is discriminatory against christians and only christians.

Gun bans next?

I think it’s a reasonable assessment of the current situation. He wants/they want to put us in a situation where our military must or can be used to restore order. They want to normalize military use against US citizens.

That’s my thought as well. A one day boycott like the “no shopping day” does literally nothing, but 40 days can reform habits. To the extent practicable, I’m doing all my shopping at Costco now. I generally eat a lot of the same things, so bulk quantities aren’t that big of a deal to manage.

Sure was. After Pell Grant and whatnot, I only needed most of my subsidized loan to live on campus at a private four year college.

It feels weird to be old enough to watch us repeat that cycle but with more fascism this time. At least I learned to always live in fear and anxiety that everything could be lost in a moment, so now my emergency fund is decent.

I’m not an economist, but is this where we

1. Lower interest rates to “help the economy”

2. Normal people still can’t afford things because we’re in a recession

3. Normal people start losing their homes

4. Rich people have cheap loans to buy said homes due to interest rate drops

5. Rich people rent out new homes to normal people for more than they were paying in mortgage, after normal people rebound or figure out how to make it work with two families in the home

6. America is…great?

Oh we are. Can’t really call ourselves “Iowa Nice” at this point. No one is trying harder to get 45’s attention than Governor Reynolds, aka The Kim Reaper. We’ve got private school vouchers, we nuked our progressive tax brackets in favor of a flat tax, and we even started our own DOGE.

I work in college financial aid. Students are eligible for federal/state funds if they’ve been granted asylum and in the country for at least a year since being granted asylum. So many still have an application pending. The process shouldn’t take more than a year, but I’ve personally seen someone whose application has been pending for seven years, and I’ve heard of longer ones. In the interim, they get a temporary status and work authorization, but I can’t imagine the stress they’re under while waiting this out and watching the new administration work against them.

Works in mysterious ways, right?

They’re just going to need more people in general, so they can let us die sooner and replenish the workforce.

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The number of people still mad at Biden…

I work in a college financial aid office, an one of my responsibilities is outreach to former students whose loans are in delinquent or default status. This is the only part of my job that makes me want to quit, but that’s besides the point.

The number of people who rant about Biden forgiving random people’s loans but not theirs, or forgiving student loans of celebrities and athletes (that’s apparently a talking point for these people?) is staggering.

I like to remind them that 1) Biden did try to offer sweeping forgiveness of 10-20k, but he did not have the authority to do so on his own, so he acted with the authority he had, and 2) now Republicans have full control of the executive and legislative branches, so we can wait to benefit from their plan to help students. I get crickets on that last point.