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Grizwald

Grizwald

@grizwald.bsky.social

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 8h

The ending of Hades II sucks, and it's surprising that it somehow used to be worse.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 8h

I am very familiar with that world myself. I've worked with people who grew up eating catfood and were babysat by being locked in a dryer.

It's still very, very hard to starve to death.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

It's difficult after the last 10 months of news out of the White House to take "it's already committed money, there's nothing we can do" seriously.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

I get it, you can conjure up a very specific person who's so functionally limited that they're unable to take any step to connect with an alternate food source, but it's easier to conjure hypothetical people who will die because they just lost their health insurance.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

How do those people at present get their SNAP card? You have to posit a bare minimum level of functionality even at present just for them to be interacting with the current system.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

$1.8 trillion is considerably more than the tens of billions of dollars you claim are required to keep everyone fed.

All kinds of things would derail in a long federal shutdown, nobody's suggesting otherwise - air travel was about to seize up and die - but starvation is not an imminent consequence.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

"Going hungry" is different than "starving to death". I emphasize again because it is very important to do so when the risk thereof is being used to justify major political decisions that "starving to death" is really, really hard to do.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

The total combined expenditures of all 50 states and their municipalities is in the order of $2.9 trillion. Tens of billions per year isn't a lot of money, and "enormous waste" is moving the goalpost from "people will starve to death".

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

State and municipal budgets is the pretty obvious answer to me. If you believe that risk is too great to be worth taking, that's a morally coherent position, but then this shutdown and all future shutdowns are political theater because the GOP knows exactly how to make you submit.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

Right, and if SNAP fails to the point where people are starving, you are demonstrating that a network of regional food banks exists to fill the gap if given adequate funding.

There's more than enough food. State budgets could pick up the slack. Dying of starvation is really hard to do.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

This is definitely the kind of response that suggests you're a smart guy who's thought things through.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

Calories are world-historically cheap and available. I'm sure SNAP has long-term health benefits but I don't think it's realistic to assume that "starvation" for anyone is actually on the table here.

It's trivially easy and inexpensive to prevent starvation at a state and municipal level.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

If that framing seems unfair, keep in mind that it was completely voluntary to declare that maintaining ACA subsidies was the reason you were fighting the Republican budget.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 9h

The Republicans just won the shutdown fight. They forced Dems to abandon their key demand of maintaining ACA subsidies and saved Thanksgiving.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

I think there's a morally coherent case for facilitating Republican governance in exchange for not having that suffering on one's conscience, but let's be real, Dems now get to have the rest of the Republican agenda on their conscience.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

And that's it in a nutshell. If Dems will cave whenever Republicans press the "make poor people suffer" button, nobody should pretend going forward that Dems have sufficient leverage to win these shutdown fights.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

What do your tomes say about the fate of generals unwilling to sustain casualties?

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

Check that, my dick.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

You can feed a 170-pound, 65-year-old man rice and beans for a *year* for $338. Not a starvation diet - you can fully meet his caloric needs for that cost.

The idea that any American was about to starve to death due to loss of SNAP was hyperbolic.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

lmao there's a definite resemblance

Median American Voter (Derogatory) @medianhater.bsky.social · 10h

We got fucking prigozn'd

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

Really important to emphasize here how hard it is to starve to death in America, where calories available per dollar are a world-historical miracle of abundance and obesity rates are a world-historical travesty.

Optimal nutrition might require SNAP, preventing starvation is trivial.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 10h

Will it? I'm not sure that's the case. It's easier to get emergency food rations to hungry people than it is to get them emergency health care.

Reposted by Grizwald

Tony Stark @tonystark.bsky.social · 11h

Why would you take back a job that is only protected until January 30th when you were illegally RIF’d in the first place.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 11h

How many old people are projected to die versus the projected number of deaths from loss of health insurance? And that's just the most direct tradeoff, before getting into the question of how many are dead in the future from helping Republicans look like a safe political party to vote for.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 11h

This whole thing feels like the classic action movie scene where the villain, holding a hostage they definitely intend to kill no matter what, demands that the hero disarm and surrender or they'll kill the hostage.