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For The First In My Life, I'm Rooting For (Gag Puke Please Kill Me) Donald Trump

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Two of the worst people in the world are fighting. The long-expected and unavoidable blow-up between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is here and it’s better than anything I could have imagined. The only reason I haven’t overdosed on popcorn is because my daughter got braces last week and I don’t want to make her feel bad because she’s not allowed to have any. But in my mind, I’m consuming vast quantities and enjoying the show.

But who am I rooting for? Who do I want to win? Well, to be honest, the actual answer is that I’d love to have Musk and Trump fighting in the Oval Office over who gets to be president for life and then have the entire West Wing crushed by a Qatari 747.

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🖕FUCK ELON MUSK -AND- DONALD TRUMP!🖕

Since THAT’S not going to happen (an Ogre can dream though, right?), I’ll settle for the next best thing:

My hope is that this mutually assured destruction comes in two stages. First, Trump annihilates Musk and then Musk gets his revenge. But I really need Trump to win the first round because if Musk wins, that’s bad for all of us in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

Ready? Let’s take a look at Ogre’s Wet Dream. Too much? Trust me, when I’m done, you, too, will have a pleasant warm feeling in your nether regions. Here we go. Bowchickabowwow!

Now that Musk has let his own ego run rampant at losing his seat at the Big Boy table, we have a unique opportunity and please dear god let this fucking happen. Trump has already threatened it and I almost cried when I saw his tweet:

This would be incredibly illegal and extremely disruptive. But you know what? Trump is a fucking fascist already engaged in crime on a level undreamed of even as he set the world’s economy on fire. Musk’s DOGE has already disrupted massive swaths of the federal government, murdered hundreds of thousands across the globe with millions to follow.

How delicious would it be if all of that chaos and crime and horror were used to do something actually beneficial?

Musk has become so deeply embedded in the US military and federal government that he is now a center of gravity unto himself. That is wildly dangerous. He’s a cancer actively attacking the host body and I would very VERY much like to remove him. But under normal circumstances, this is all but impossible to do. There are billions of dollars tied up in his contracts. Normal administrations would never just walk away because of the disruption. The court cases alone would take a decade.

But the Trump regime is all about ignoring the courts and the damage done, aren’t they? They’re ripping out vital organs left and right. I would love nothing more than if they were to rip out all of Musk’s cancer. How much more damage could they possibly do at this point? Why not rip out the toxic if they’re already purging the good?

This would cripple Musk who has built much of his business plan of soaking the taxpayer for billions over the next 20-30 years while delivering as little as possible in return.

He’ll still be the richest man in the world but he’ll have lost his control over the military. If we’re already paying the price, we might as well get something worth the pain.

Are you feeling a little sweaty yet? Yeah, you are. Here comes the money shot. Ooh yeah.

Trump is a petty vengeful person and Musk is really pissing him off. Musk has threatened his MAGA Murder Budget bill. He’s talking smack about him on Twitter. He essentially called him a pedophile. He’s called for his removal from office. Musk has threatened to use his vast wealth to hurt Trump and that’s not an empty threat.

There’s little chance that Trump will not severely hurt Musk. No one can challenge a strongman leader and walk away unscathed, even the richest man in the world. It’s a sign of weakness and Trump cannot allow himself to appear weak, ever.

So, Trump will lash out at Musk in some way. Musk, as the richest man in the world, will have to either back down or fight back. And he knows if he backs down, Trump owns him.

What do you suppose the chances are that the richest man in the world will allow someone to own him? Zero? Less than zero? Hell fucking no not ever?

Them midterms is comin’ up and Musk knows how to monkey with people’s perception of a candidate. He’s already threatened to primary any Republican who makes him mad. What if he decides to run 40 Republicans who are loyal to him in districts that are tired of Trump? He doesn’t have to win the seats to fuck Trump, he just has to ensure Republicans lose.

Musk could also run a relentless anti-Trump campaign on Twitter. As the premiere site for Neo-Nazis, this would risk turning Trump’s core base, white nationalists, against him. They’re obviously not going to vote for Democrats but if they stop voting for Republicans, that’s a problem for the GOP.

Tell me you’re not all hot and bothered thinking about the possibilities of these two assholes destroying each other.

And then there’s this:

Musk is a junkie who will not live for another 40 years but he’s right that Trump won’t be around as long. Even if Trump declares himself Emperor For Life, he’s 80 and his health is not great. If he makes it to 85 and is not a drooling vegetable, I’ll be surprised. Not for nothing, outliving Trump is one of the things that gets me up in the morning.1

Republicans have to be doing the same math. Loyalty to Trump is great and all but is it worth risking the wrath of the richest man in the world who holds grudges? Oh…what to do…what to do? I feel so BAD for them!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!! No I don’t.

If Trump starts to hit Musk and Musk starts to retaliate, you are, for sure, going to see some Republicans distance themselves from Trump. Trump is old and while Musk may not be the future of the GOP, he’ll be more of a threat in 10 years than a dead Donald Trump.

Ahhh…a long-term GOP civil war. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Anyway, we really REALLY want this or some variation of it to occur. What we absolutely do not want is for Musk to stage his own coup and have Trump removed like he’s been threatening. Putting JD Vance in power would Bad. Very Bad.

Remember, JD Vance belongs to Peter Thiel. Vance only exists because of the Silicon Valley Broligarchy. He’s also smart. Like, for real smart. He’s got the personality of a blank piece of paper but he’s not stupid. That means he will follow orders and he’s a true believer in the Silicon Valley religion where humans are a disposable impediment in the quest of billionaire immortality.

Under no circumstances can JD Vance be allowed to ascend to the presidency. Trump’s erratic stupidity is the only thing keeping him from being Putin or Hitler. JD Vance is not crippled by a lack of intelligence and an addiction to drama and chaos.

In this fight between two of the worst people to ever walk the Earth, we want Donald Trump to win. And then immediately be destroyed by the junkie Nazi loser Elon Musk. That’s the best-case scenario we can hope for.

After that, we topple the regime and come for them all with pitchforks, torches, and life sentences for all the ratfucks who tried to destroy this country.

Now go smoke a cigarette and change your underwear. Leave a $20 on the dresser and recommend me to all your friends. 😜

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year. Thank you for everything!

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 150 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

1

I’m going to get so fucking drunk the day he dies. There will be lobster and shrimp and so much fucking alcohol. I may get drunk enough that I’ll forget Trump died, which will be awesome because I can wake up the next day and celebrate it again!

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DGA51
8 hours ago
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Central Pennsyltucky
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Playing the Budget Spin Game

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It’s Simply Not Adding Up

It seems that ignoring studied facts about the effects of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is not enough.

The White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson and their colleagues are selling a misleading story about its financial effects.

Even to lay citizens not enmeshed in the details of the bill, proposals to cut about $160 billion in federal spending and tighten Medicaid eligibility so that MAGA can make permanent $4 trillion towards tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy and corporations doesn’t seem to add up.

But both Johnson, who is promoting the bill as it starts its Senate review, and the White House argue that the independent Congressional Budget Office, whose job it is to price out such bills, political opponents and economists are flat wrong. The difference, they say, is that the country’s economy will boom in the next years, and that any missing money to cover the cost of rising deficits will come from industrial growth.

Those rosy views of growth don’t account for global disruptions from tariff policy that seem to be depressing growth or even the certainty that would allow for the kind of investments Trump seeks. They don’t seem to count global oil price fluctuations or worsening climate remediation or worldwide migrant movements.

However expected or predictable this kind of political truth-stretching, real people undoubtedly will be hurt by the intended budget cuts, and there seems little about that entering the Republicans’ sales job. Indeed, enough Senate Republicans are raising questions of their own about the numbers that the outcome for this bill — which passed the House by a single Republican vote — is in doubt.

Debate on a variety of issues and Senate maneuvering will continue over the next couple of weeks, likely followed by relatively endless sessions to define a variety of compromises to keep a Republican majority intact, but Team Trump wants a positive vote by July 4.  Among the issues is a parliamentary question about whether this bill even qualifies to be considered on a majority vote rather than the normally required 60-vote margin.

The good news is only that so far it is all a combination of media spin to support Trump without questions, to use pressure about reelection backing, along with some image bashing and ridicule.  But senators are not being bodily threatened for their votes. No one is claiming emergency powers to eliminate Congress or take flamethrowers to make their point. Still, we don’t deserve to be treated by our own government as dolts.

If you push for tax cuts, explain how the resulting debt will go away. What could be more straightforward? Why deny the math? At stake, of course, are not only questions about budget and money for Trump’s major programs, but significant issues over consolidating all Washington power in the White House — and electoral politics.

Number Disputes and More

Beyond the multiple number of disputed financial issues, we keep learning about clauses hidden in the 1100 pages that could affect unrelated legal issues. For example, there is a provision, not defined, that bars courts from enforcing a contempt of court finding against the White House, just the kind of issue arising from legal challenges on immigration and tariffs. Or another that effectively blocks courts from enforcing injunctions unless challengers pay a bond at the start of their challenge.

But more concern in the Senate is focused on claims by the bill’s promoters that run afoul of basic financial impact questions. As The New York Times headline on a fact-checking article about the bill read, “Trump and his allies are selling his domestic policy bill with false claims.

As the article outlines, Team Trump spokesmen are dismissing the effects on boosting the national debt as incorrect and described cuts that will eliminate 8 million Americans from Medicaid eligibility as pursuit of waste and abuse, not a cut to health spending.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insists that there has been no inflation since Trump’s inauguration. Office of Management and Budget director Russell T. Vought says that there will be no deficit or any harm to the nation’s health by dropping millions from coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the debt will grow by $3.8 trillion over 10 years, with $1 trillion, trends, if not numbers, mirrored in various other economic analyses.  This has spawned a White House attack on the validity of that agency’s numbers and its historical accuracy. All parties agree that events like Covid or a banking collapse can throw off growth estimates.  Multi-billionaire Elon Musk called the bill a “disgusting abomination” for “massively increasing the already gigantic” national debt.

The Speaker repeated on weekend talk shows that “We are not cutting Medicaid,” repeating what Trump has said. Of course, they are cutting eligibility for Medicaid, which in turn, will affect rural hospitals and states left with paying for what the feds will not.

We’re advised to watch the behaviors of a half-dozen Republican senators including Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who is standing up against Medicaid cuts, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who wants all spending rolled back to pre-Covid levels, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, Tom Tillis, R-N.C., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., all of whom argue that the numbers simply don’t add up.  Sen. Joanie Ernst, R-Iowa, has won the Cruella de Ville nomination for the month by insisting (twice) that we shouldn’t worry about any deaths from Medicaid cuts because we’re all going to die anyway.

Of course, Trump wants to add spending as well in his 2026 budget — large amounts for border and mass deportation enforcement, new military weapons systems, the start of a missile defense “dome,” and increased money for space exploration.

If you’re a government skeptic, this is a debate you may want to tune in on.


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The post Playing the Budget Spin Game appeared first on DCReport.org.

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DGA51
1 day ago
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If you push for tax cuts, explain how the resulting debt will go away. What could be more straightforward?
Central Pennsyltucky
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NM: Stride Caught Misbehaving Yet Again

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A New Mexico school district has terminated its contract with Stride Inc, the 800 pound gorilla of the cyber school world, after a load of legal and academic violations. It's not a new issue with the company, which generally seems to consider educating students a mission secondary to the search for more profit.

Who are these guys?

Stride used to be K-12, a for-profit company aimed at providing on-line and blended learning. It was founded in 2000 by Ron Packard, former banker and Mckinsey consultant, and quickly became the leading national company for cyber schooling.

One of its first big investors was Michal Milken. That investment came a decade after he pled guilty to six felonies in the “biggest fraud case in the securities industry” ending his reign as the “junk bond king.” Milken was sentenced to ten years, served two, and was barred from ever securities investment. In 1996, he had established Knowledge Universe, an organization he created with his brother Lowell and Larry Elison, who both kicked in money for K12.

Also investing in K12, very quietly, was the financial giant Blackrock, founded and run by Larry Fink. Larry graduated from the same high school as Milken. Larry's brother Steve is a member of the Stride board, and at one point ran division of Knowledge Universe. Larry Fink is noted for his privacy about family, and a search for the two brothers’ names turns up only one article— a Forbes piece from 2000 which notes that Steve Fink, in 1984, moved next door to Micheal Milken and went on to become “one of Milken’s most trusted confidants,” a “guy he’s relied on to fix business trouble.”

Have they been in trouble before?

Oh lordy. Here's a partial list.

In 2011, the New York Times detailed how K12's schools were failing miserably, but still making investors and officers a ton of money. Former teachers wrote tell-alls about their experiences. In 2012. Florida caught them using fake teachers. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cyber schools that were disqualified from sports eligibility. In 2014, Packard turned out to be one of the highest paid public workers in the country, "despite the fact that only 28% of K12 schools met state standards in 2011-2012."

In 2013 K12 settled a class action lawsuit in Virginia for $6.75 million after stockholders accused the company of misleading them about “the company’s business practices and academic performance.” In 2014, Middlebury College faculty voted to end a partnership with K12 saying the company’s business practices “are at odds with the integrity, reputation and educational mission of the college.”

Packard was himself sued for misleading investors with overly positive public statements, and then selling 43% of his own K12 stock ahead of a bad news-fueled stock dip. Shortly thereafter, in 2014, he stepped down from leading K12 to start a new enterprise.

In 2016 K12 got in yet another round of trouble in California for lying about student enrollment, resulting in a $165 million settlement with then Attorney General Kamala Harris. K12 was repeatedly dropped in some states and cities for poor performance.

In 2020, they landed a big contract in Miami-Dade county (after a big lucrative contribution to an organization run by the superintendent); subsequently Wired magazine wrote a story about their "epic series of tech errors." K12 successfully defended itself from a lawsuit in Virginia based on charges they had greatly overstated their technological capabilities by arguing that such claims were simply advertising “puffery.”

In November of 2021, K12 announced that it would rebrand itself as Stride.

The New York Times had quoted Packard as calling lobbying a “core competency” of the company, and the company has spread plenty of money around doing just that. And despite all its troubles, Stride was still beloved on Wall Street for its ability to make money.

In 2023, Stride found itself wrapped up in a lawsuit with one of its own division over broken promises and attempts to lie their way out of commitment. 

In 2024, analysts were warning investors away from Stride, saying that, among other things, Stride was lying to investors about how many schools were operating and ghost students being used to puss up enrollment numbers. Later that year, Senator and noted MAGA doofus Markwayne Mullin was in trouble for shenanigans with his Stride stock. 

So, yes, Stride has never been tightly bound by rules.

Who's actually running the outfit these days?

Since 2021, the CEO has been the former CFO, James Rhyu. He is a corporate bean counter, not an educator. The Fuzzy Panda report in 2024, discussing Rhyu's "colorful leadership style;" FP says that "the phrase asshole came up frequently." Former execs also told FP about incidents of rage and bullying. "management by fear, bullying control freak." I've read plenty of pages of the man's depositions, and "slippery weasel" also comes to mind. This example captures his style pretty well:
Q: Mr. Rhyu, are you a man of your word?
Rhyu: I’m not sure I understand that question.
Q: Do you do what you say you are going to do, sir?
Rhyu: Under what circumstances?
Q: Do you do what you say you are going to do, Mr. Rhyu?
Rhyu: That’s such a broad question. It’s hard for me to answer.

 Is it hard to answer? Because I feel as if it's really easy to answer. It's one thing to offer the "correct" answer and not mean it, but it's a whole other level to pretend that you can't imagine what the correct answer might be.

So what happened in New Mexico?

Gallup-McKinley County Schools includes 4,957 square miles of territory, including some reservations. There are 12,518 students enrolled. 48% of the children in the district live below the poverty line. 

So the district hired Stride to provide an online program, and that was not going well. According to the district's press release, the data was looking ugly:

* Graduation rates in GMCS's Stride-managed online program plunged from 55.79% in 2022 to just 27.67% in 2024.
* Student turnover reached an alarming 30%.
* New Mexico state math proficiency scores for Stride students dropped dramatically, falling to just 5.6%.
* Ghost enrollments and a lack of individualized instruction further compromised student learning.

At the special May 16 board meeting to terminate the contract, the board was feeling pretty cranky.

The district said that the company is failing to meet requirements outlined in their contract. “This is something we’ve literally been working on since the beginning of the year with stride, and we just finally had a belly full of it and we’re ready to make a change,” said Chris Mortensen, President of Gallup-McKinley Schools Board of Education.

The board voted unanimously not just to end the contract, but to seek damages. Stride filed a motion for a restraining order to keep the board from firing them. The court said no. 

Mortenson has had plenty to say about the situation. From the district's press release:

GMCS School Board President Chris Mortensen stated, "Our students deserve educational providers that prioritize their academic success, not corporate profit margins. Putting profits above kids was damaging to our students, and we refuse to be complicit in that failure any longer."

Stride CEO James Rhyu has admitted to failing to meet New Mexico's legal requirements for teacher-student ratios, an issue that GMCS suspects was not isolated. "We have reason to believe that Stride has raised student-teacher ratios not just in New Mexico but nationwide," said Mortensen. "If true, this could have inflated Stride's annual profit margins by hundreds of millions of dollars. That would mean corporate revenues and stock prices benefited at the expense of students and in some cases, in defiance of the law."
"Gallup-McKinley County Schools students were used to prop up Stride's bottom line," said Mortensen. "This district, like many others, trusted Stride to deliver education. Instead, we got negligence cloaked in corporate branding."

The district is looking for another online school provider, and I wish them luck with that. Parents in the wide-ranging district liked the online option, and want something to replace Stride. But finding a cyber-school company that will provide the oversight, transparency and accountability that GMCS wants (not to mention the non-profiteering) is likely to be a challenge. Because if the high-capacity 800 pound gorilla of cyber-school has to cheat to make a buck in your district, who else is going to do any better? 

Of course, that's the Stride business model, so maybe there's hope. Maybe. Stride, for its part, can be expected to just keep grinding away, unchastened and searching for the next district that hasn't done enough homework that they will fall for Stride's sales pitch. 

 

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DGA51
1 day ago
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If Stride shows up where you live and pay school taxes, scream bloody murder!
Central Pennsyltucky
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In Defense (Again) Of Stay-at-Home-Parents

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It’s been 17 years since I became a Stay-at-Home Ogre. You’d think doing a bang-up job for almost two decades would be long enough for me to have silenced the critics. Clearly, that is never ever going to happen. My wife continues to get shit from her family that I “need to get a job.” I have a job. Two, actually. This newsletter and my real job, which is to take care of my kids and to cook/clean/be there when they need it.

This article is not for my wife’s family. It’s for you, my fellow Stay-at-Home parents, whether you be male or female. If you made this choice of your own free will (I’ll elaborate on that presently), you’re doing what’s right for you and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

This article is also for you, the “feminist” reader who thinks women shouldn’t BE Stay-at-Home moms. You seem to have missed the part of feminism where you get to choose. That’s the point. Being a Stay-at-Home mom is a choice. Respect it.

And for you, the “manly” reader who thinks men shouldn’t be Stay-at-Home dads under any circumstances. That’s woman’s work? You cannot comprehend what masculinity is until you have devoted your life to raising a child.

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There are three reasons I am a SAH Ogre:

  1. We couldn’t afford daycare - Or rather, we could have, but it would have been my entire paycheck. Mind you, this was just one kid at the time and before we knew Jordan was autistic. Childcare for two? And one of them special needs? The price would have been astronomical.

    But even before that, we thought about it. Why the fuck would I work fulltime to pay my entire salary to have someone raise my kid(s)? That didn’t make any sense. Better for me to stay home and do it myself. So I did.

  2. Mrs. Ogre had the job with much better benefits and far more potential - I worked in retail as a manager. I was good at it, but I didn’t love it. It paid OK but there wasn’t a lot of room for growth. I was not cut out for upper management. Too much traveling and it was always a struggle with this or that store manager.1

    Mrs. Ogre had a job that allowed for a lot of growth and her benefits were vastly superior, including a pension. It didn’t make sense for her to quit. It made all the sense for me to leave the workforce, though.

  3. I was, and continue to be, a better fit for the role - I love my wife. She is an amazing mother and our children adore her. She is, however, not very good at housekeeping. Her mother, for some reason, did not teach her how to cook or clean.

    I, on the other hand, have been cooking since I was maybe eight? And I’m very good at it. I taught Anastasia how to cook and she’s taken to it like a duck to water.

    I also know how to scrub the apartment from top to bottom until it shines, courtesy of years in retail. My wife has not cleaned a toilet in 20 years and we’re both happy with this arrangement because she’s terrible at it.

    Also, Mrs. Ogre cannot deal with isolation and being a SAH is extremely isolating. Spending hours alone with no one but a crying baby is unbearably lonely and stressful if you’re not psychologically built for it. Not everyone is cut out for that life. Women are not “naturally” able to handle it because they’re women. That’s old-timey stupid sexism. Some can, some can’t. There’s no shame in it any more than not being able to deal with large crowds or the sight of blood. My wife could not handle the isolation. It’s not part of who she is. But I could, so I did. I loved not being around people all day. It appealed to my not-so-inner introvert.

Stay-at-Home Parents of the world, unite!

Now, for you, my fellow SAHs, you may have completely different reasons. Maybe you feel a household needs one parent at home. Maybe you feel compelled by traditional gender roles (not tradwives. I’ll get to that). Maybe you, too, decided that you didn’t want to pay someone to raise your kids.

The important thing is that you made that choice and you did it for you (and your kids). Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re doing the wrong thing. Fuck’em. They don’t get to tell you how to live your life.

At the same time, some of you, especially the men, may be SAHs because you can’t find work. That’s rough and I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. But never, not for one fucking second, let anyone make you feel less than for taking care of your kids. It may not have been a deliberate choice but you’re doing it and it’s important. Take pride in that shit while you have the opportunity.

If you get a job next month or next year, this is time you get to take care of your child. Let no one and nothing take that accomplishment away from you. You stepped up instead of crawling into a mancave or a bottle. The men of generations before us rarely engaged in raising children. They were conditioned not to and that was a loss for all of us. You have the chance to do better. Take it and run. Your kids will never forget it.

Come on, ladies, leave your fellow Moms alone!

For my feminist friends, I was dismayed and, frankly, disappointed, years ago to learn that there is a cohort among you that frowns upon Stay-at-Home moms. It’s not a dominating cohort and I cannot for the life of me tell you which wave it’s from but it exists and, seriously, what the actual fuck?

Like me, there are going to be women who have no particular interest in a career outside the home. Been there, done that. It was not fulfilling in any way whatsoever. But being a homemaker? Raising my kids? Giving them the tools they need to thrive? That has been the most fulfilling job I have ever had. I’m more proud of my work as a parent than anything I ever did or could ever do in retail. Even my work as a writer, which I love and am immensely proud of, doesn't come close to the joy being a SAH brings me.

I know I’m not the only one to feel this way so why is this a problem for women to choose this path? To condemn them is…kind of fucking gross, honestly. The entire point of feminism was to give women the freedom to live life however they wanted, not how you think they should live. If that comes off as mansplaining, well, feel free to explain how scolding women who choose to be SAH moms is feminist. I’m all ears.

Now, tradwives are a completely different story. That’s not freedom. That’s slavery to a misogynist who abuses you. On the surface, it’s similar, but we know that tradlife is not about choice and freedom. It’s about keeping women powerless and trapped. It’s literally propaganda for the patriarchy. You want to savage that? Have at it. I’ll be happy to join in. But leave regular SAH moms alone.

Bro, changing diapers is gay!

On the other hand, my disappointment in that cohort of feminists pales in comparison to my loathing for the far larger, louder, and intensely more stupid cohort of “men” who think child-rearing is for women.

It is all but guaranteed when a MAGA manly man notices that my bio says I’m a SAH parent, they will have a meltdown. It’s impossible for them to resist calling my masculinity into question. They’re programmed like robots. It’s happened so many times my response is almost equally programmed.

I laugh at them.

I’m being called “unmanly” by someone who is afraid to change diapers. Who thinks brushing their daughter’s hair would make them “gay.” Who thinks holding a baby and bottle feeding them is a sign of weakness.

These are not serious people.

The most rage I have ever induced in some of these losers has been from the ones who are actually fathers. They mock me for “letting my wife go to work while I sit around the house.” I asked them how many times they got up in the middle of the night to take care of the baby when it was crying. How many times did they clean up the puke or poop? Once? Never? Left all of that to their wife? Dumped all of the hardest parts of being a parent on her while they slept? What kind of fucking loser, what kind of MAN doesn’t take care of his own crying baby?

Oooooohhhh…the rage.

Because, you see, a real man doesn’t hesitate to do the hard work. A real man doesn’t pawn it all off on his wife, who usually has a job, too. A real man wants to be a part of his kid’s life, even as a baby. But that’s “woke” and “kinda gay” according to men who will never have kids or whose kids will grow up to hate them. Enjoy that life of regret, losers.

Why is this so complicated?

I have been there almost every day for my kids. I picked up an extra kid eight years ago, Lila, the daughter of our next-door neighbor, Claudia. I’ve been there when she needed me, too.

One of the kids was sick? I was there to take care of them so Mom could go to work without worry. Doctor’s appointment? I got you. Half day? Someone is home to keep an eye on them.

I’ve helped them with their homework before their moms came home from work and had dinner ready. I’ve chaperoned their field trips. I was PTA president at their school for four years.2

Forgot to bring lunch? I’ll run it over. Feeling sick? I’ll come get you. Had a period misadventure? I’ll be right over.

I’ve been there when the kids needed me at school as soon as they needed me dozens of times over the years. Sometimes multiple times in the same month. Something I would not have been able to do if I had been working in a store or in an office.

They grew up knowing that I would always be there if anything went wrong and I would always be there when they got home. Sometimes with a mug of hot chocolate on a cold day or a little snack if they were hungry. That kind of stability is beyond measure for a developing mind.

To deny them that because I’m “supposed” to have a job is the height of ignorance and I really shouldn’t have to keep explaining it after all these years. My bio kids are thriving. Lila has overcome substantial difficulties because our family was there to support her and her mom. I don’t even want to imagine where she would be if she hadn’t adopted me as her surrogate father and the rest of us as her bonus family.

Being a SAH is a privilege and one we had to pay dearly for. We’re not drowning financially anymore but we were for a very long time. When the kids were babies, there was a lot of rice and beans and pasta and chicken legs on the menu because it was inexpensive. But it was worth it for our children to have a parent at home looking after them. No one can take that away from me and shame on anyone who tries.

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🖕FUCK THE PATRIARCHY!🖕

1

I was a DM in training for 6 months and hated it So. Fucking. Much. I gave it a shot but it just wasn’t for me.

2

Four eternally long years. I changed the PTA bylaws so no one could ever serve for four years again. Why would I inflict that on someone else?

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DGA51
2 days ago
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Central Pennsyltucky
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A Primer on Pharmacy Benefit Managers

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President Trump signed an executive order last month to lower prescription drug costs, partly taking aim at the considerable influence of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Few Americans know what PBMs are.

In short, PBMs have great influence over the logistics and cashflow of the prescription drug industry, setting prices for patients and controlling their access to medicines. But what exactly do they do?

Federal law first mandated prescriptions for certain medicines in the 1950s. In response, health insurance companies added prescription drug benefits to their policies. PBMs arose to help insurers implement these new benefits.

Today, PBMs manage all components of health plans’ (payers’) prescription drug benefit. The “Big Three” – CVS Caremark, OptumRx, and Express Scripts – control 60 percent of the US market, managing about 80 percent of all prescriptions and serving nearly 300 million Americans.

To understand how PBMs operate, we can trace the flow of both prescription drugs and funds in the supply chain.

The flow of the drug is relatively straightforward: Wholesalers purchase drugs from manufacturers, who in turn sell them to pharmacies, who in turn distribute them to patients.

The flow of funds is much more convoluted. While manufacturers are selling their drugs to wholesalers, they are also negotiating with PBMs to include those drugs in health plans’ pharmacy benefits. PBMs secure rebates or discounts from drug makers in exchange for preferred placement on a health plan’s formulary, its list of preferred drugs. The more preferred the placement on the formulary (e.g., with lower cost sharing), the more likely the drug will be chosen for or by patients over other options, leading to greater use and greater profit. In exchange for managing this process, health plans pay PBMs.

Lastly, PBMs reimburse pharmacies for dispensing drugs to patients, and PBMs then bill health plans for the cost of the prescription.

There are two concerns in this process though: vertical integration and spread pricing.

Vertical integration occurs when a PBM’s parent company owns multiple parts of the drug supply chain, such as the insurer, the PBM itself, the pharmacy, etc. Some even manufacture drugs overseas.

Take CVS Health, for example. CVS Health owns Aetna (health insurer), Caremark (PBM), and CVS pharmacy (as well as specialty and mail-order pharmacies). CVS Health has, therefore, vertically integrated its entire operation.

This vertical integration contributes to the “Big Three” PBMs having less competition and more power to steer patients to their own pharmacies and insurers, leading to more profits.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that the “Big Three” reimbursed unaffiliated pharmacies at lower rates than their own pharmacies. They also marked up drugs at their own pharmacies by hundreds and thousands of percent, resulting in over $7 billion in revenue from 2017 to 2022.

Spread pricing is another challenge.

Spread pricing is a practice by which PBMs charge the health plan a certain amount for a drug but then turn around and pay the pharmacy less for the same drug. The difference is the spread, often retained (in part or in full) by the PBM as profit.

Spread pricing means that PBMs reimburse independent pharmacies less than what those pharmacies paid for the drugs from the wholesaler, resulting in a loss. Over 25,000 independent pharmacies in the US closed between 2010 and 2020 because of these losses. According to a 2024 FTC report, the top three PBMs generated about $1.5 billion in profits from spread pricing from just 51 specialty drugs from 2017 to 2022.

Ultimately, for patients, vertical integration and spread pricing mean less pharmacy access and choice for patients, alongside higher out-of-pocket costs and premiums.

In response to these concerns, both state and federal governments are increasing their regulatory authority over PBMs.

All 50 states have passed legislation to regulate PBMs. Some laws focus on protecting small pharmacies by ensuring unaffiliated pharmacies are reimbursed at the same rates as PBM-affiliated ones. Others limit patient cost-sharing or require PBMs to be licensed to operate. Additionally, 27 states require PBMs to comply with reporting and transparency requirements.

One state has gone even further: Arkansas now prohibits PBMs from operating their own retail pharmacies in the state, disrupting vertical integration.

Federally, seven PBM-focused, bipartisan, bicameral bills have been introduced this congressional cycle. They focus largely on prohibiting spread pricing, increasing transparency and reporting requirements, and changing how drug manufacturers and PBMs negotiate. Some bills also define penalties for PBMs that don’t play by the rules and give the federal government more enforcement power.

The influence of PBMs in the prescription drug supply chain has grown in recent decades, as have their profits. In response, states and the federal government have proposed or enacted laws to regulate PBMs and lower prescription drug costs for patients. What legislative approaches will regulate PBMs in a way that actually lowers costs for patients, though, is yet to be determined.

Research for this article was supported by Arnold Ventures.

The post A Primer on Pharmacy Benefit Managers first appeared on The Incidental Economist.
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DGA51
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Central Pennsyltucky
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Should Democrats Welcome Elon Musk Back? LOL! Fuck You.

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You want to come back to the Dems? How about you go the fuck to Mars and choke on a dick?

The legacy press is trying really hard to give the impression that Elon Musk is “out of politics” and “out of the White House.” That’s not really true. He’s out of favor with Trump and most Republicans have lost his phone number because Musk is so unpopular, he’s an electoral albatross. See: Wisconsin, Failure Total.

But DOGE is still staffed with loyal Muskovian children who hit puberty masturbating to pictures of Cybertrucks. Who do you think they’re taking orders from? Stephen Fucking Miller? Get real. Musk just ran off with his wife.1 This whole “Musk is out” is all PR so the public will stop shitting on Tesla and setting Musk’s main source of money on fire. And Musk is in desperate need of a PR miracle.

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🖕FUCK ELON MUSK!🖕

Which brings us to Politico’s public blow job. I was going to call it a puff piece, but as you’ll see, this is straight up fellatio. I don’t know who Debra Kahn, the Politico writer, is, but I have to imagine she’s angling to be Elon’s next baby mama.

Is that unkind? Perhaps. Was it well-earned? Well, here’s the headline of Kahn’s article:

I…what the fuck…I just can’t with these people…

It’s fun reading articles like this2 because it reminds me of how fucking useless the legacy press is. Here’s a fun example!

Democrats and green advocates have been spectacularly unsuccessful so far at retaining the Biden administration’s billions in incentives for solar, wind, batteries and electric vehicles…

You see? Democrats and green advocates have been unsuccessful! Not “Republicans have worked tirelessly to strip billions in funding for green energy.” All the onus is on the left. Republicans aren’t even part of the equation. All that money that was stolen (illegally, I might add) from thousands of green energy projects? That just…happened. All on its fucking own. We mustn’t ever speak of Republicans.

Republicans never actually DO anything. Democrats fail to stop things from happening. That’s always the framing the legacy press uses. You should watch for it. Once you see it, you can never unsee it and it will make your fucking eyes bleed with rage.

But let’s get back to Musk:

“Elon Musk and Tesla hit the nail on the head,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, the president and CEO of the solar industry’s main trade group, the Solar Energy Industries Association, in a statement. “Rolling back credits for residential solar, utility-scale solar, and manufacturing would put our grid’s reliability at risk and dismantle one of the greatest industrial revivals in American history. We hope the Senate is listening.”

Even if the Senate is listening, Musk will have to speak louder. He didn’t take the opportunity in Friday’s valedictory Oval Office appearance with Trump to air his disagreement over the megabill when asked to elaborate on what he’d like to change.

“The Senate”? They mean “Republicans,” but, again, we can’t say that. And, boy, it sure was weird how Politico failed to mention that Musk was so fucked up on drugs in the Oval Office he could barely stand:

Not one mention of Musk’s drug problem in Politico. But Democrats should open their arms to him, right? Musk the fucking Ket junkie? The guy hitting drugs so hard he’s pissing himself because he can’t control his bladder? Sounds like a real stable winner to me.

Also no mention of Musk being a shit-eating Nazi. Nothing about his little Nazi salutes or turning Twitter3 into a cesspool of Nazi hate speech and dickless incel propaganda. A brief mention of pouring hundreds of millions into Republican politics but none about how that money was used to push the most extreme racist version of the GOP. Just kind of glossed over that shit. Whoopsie! Totally normal political stuff. Pay it no mind!

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

Oh, fuck you, Politico!

But here’s my favorite part of this article:

“If Musk is coming back to a better place, they will welcome him with open arms,” predicted Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity. “He did more to change the auto industry with Tesla than all of my work and all of my colleagues’ work to try to change the auto industry from the outside.”

Musk cannot come “back to a better place” because he was never here. It was always a sham. Always. At no point was Elon Musk a good person. His grandfather was an actual Nazi who moved to South Africa because it was the most racist place on Earth after WWII. His parents became rich off of modern-day slave labor and Musk himself grew up in a society that made the Jim Crow South look progressive and tolerant.

Musk “embraced” the left because the left was the only way to advance his agenda of “saving” mankind. This is the thing Khan is either ignoring or somehow does not know about Musk. He sees himself as the personal messiah of the human race. He will be the one to secure the future of humanity. If not, he doesn’t care if humanity has a future.

More specifically, the future of humanity has to be on his terms. That means white people. Lots and lots of white people. Does Khan honestly think Musk is unaware he’s murdered over 300 million people in just the last three months by cutting off foreign aid? Of course he knows, and so does Khan.

But, you know, fuck all of those loser Africans. They don’t fucking matter, right? As long as we do something about the climate, they’re an acceptable loss. Them and the millions more that are going to die in the coming months.

If Khan was actually doing her job and not trying to score a Musk Baby™, she would know that Elon Musk does not, in fact, give a shit about the climate. At all. Even a little. In fact, he finds efforts to combat climate change a sin against progress.

Oh? Shouldn’t a professional reporter know that? I do and I’m just some schmuck at a keyboard with access to the internet. Then again, I don’t work for a right-wing rag like Politico trying to rehabilitate the greatest mass murderer of the 21st Century (so far). Jesus fucking Christ, at least pretend you’re a journalist, Khan.

Here’s the deal for Khan and the other sycophantic fucks trying to rebrand Musk. Elon Musk believes in “Longtermism.”4 That’s a sick and depraved ideology that looks at the long-term survival of the human race. Sounds good except it looks at millions of years from now and predicts trillions of human lives, spread throughout the galaxy. Think of a very crowded Star Trek universe. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, if you’d like to do a deep dive:

The problem is that Longtermism places the same equal value on every hypothetical future life as on current real-world lives. And the math is the math using this extremely flawed logic. Trillions of future lives outweigh the current eight billion on Earth. That means anything that gets in the way of humanity escaping the Earth and living among the stars and reaching that future of trillions of lives is to be fought tooth and nail. Musk treats such “roadblocks” as existential threats, no different than nuclear war or an asteroid strike.

And what are those roadblocks? Empathy. Humanity. Liberals. Green energy. Anything that slows down billionaires from consuming everything in their path. Funny how that works, innit? Longtermism just so happens to tell the greedy rich that everything they’re doing is moral and just! How wonderful!

So, no, Elon Musk will not be “coming back” to a better place because he is a fucking white nationalist junkie in a death cult for greedy psychopaths who gleefully plan to murder billions for their own edification.

Now, I’m not saying it’s completely impossible. Musk could spend a year in rehab. Plenty of people have escaped cults and renounced white nationalism. It’s entirely possible for Musk to overdose and survive, giving him a wakeup call about what an absolute piece of shit he is. It’s not impossible.

Maybe, upon having this epiphany, Musk will quietly do the work to overcome the fascism he enabled without making himself the main character. Maybe he’ll get back to his environmental work for real instead of doing it to feed his monstrous ego.

But let’s be honest, that’s not going to fucking happen. Musk is going to continue to spiral out of control. He’s a sad, pathetic, lonely loser who destroys everything around him and pays women to have his babies because he has no friends and he’ll never find love. It’s all but guaranteed he’ll die alone from an overdose and no one will miss him, not even his 14+ kids whose names he doesn’t know.

This is the person Democrats should take back into the fold?

Hell fucking no.

Elon Musk is not a hero and you cannot use someone this toxic and damaged to do good. He’s a third-generation monster whose legacy is death and horror. A cancer we fought with every fiber of our being until we drove him out. Politico can write all the puff pieces they want but when Musk dies, hopefully sooner than later, that will be the story of him. No rose-tinted lenses. No tragic tale of a great man. No rosebud. Just a sick and twisted freak who left a trail of unimaginable carnage and will be remembered as a blight on humanity.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year. Thank you for everything!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 153 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

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One Nazi cucking another? I love that for Miller.

2

You and I have very different concepts of “fun.” I enjoy cursing at my computer screen.

3

I will deadname Twitter until the end of fucking time.

4

Seriously, if she didn’t know this, she should immediately resign and go work at a school newspaper.

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DGA51
3 days ago
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Elon Musk is not a hero and you cannot use someone this toxic and damaged to do good.
Central Pennsyltucky
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