«A school-age child has died of measles in West Texas, the first death from the disease in a decade in the United States. The child had not been vaccinated against measles, according to the city of Lubbock’s health department.»
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-dies-measles-west-texas-outbreak-rcna193812
So now the family has experienced the loss of a child and, presumably, may experience “a certain amount of social opprobrium.”
🙁
«The House’s resolution lays out a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts across committees with a target of $2 trillion, puts a $4.5 trillion ceiling on the deficit impact of any GOP plan to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and includes $300 billion in additional spending for the border and defense and a $4 trillion debt limit increase.»
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5164108-house-republicans-budget-resolution-trump-agenda/
(What is the current debt limit?
«The federal debt limit was reinstated on January 2, 2025, at $36.1 trillion. That total comprised $28.8 trillion in debt held by the public and $7.3 trillion in intergovernmental accounts. The statutory debt limit constrains nearly all federal debt, including both debt held by the public (mostly Treasury securities sold via auctions) and intragovernmental debt (mainly federal trust funds, such as those for Social Security, Medicare, and federal retirement systems).»
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12045
(Pretty sure that “intergovernmental debt” is how we borrow money from Social Security, btw.)
Why can’t journalists include the base figure when things change? It’s not like we yutzes know this stuff of the top of our heads. Ok back to The Hill story:)
«The resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a figure that some lawmakers said could not be reached without significant slashes to the social safety net program.
…
“Do a word search for yourself,” Johnson said Tuesday morning. “It doesn’t even mention Medicaid in the bill, so that’s an important point.”»
Uh huh. This is why people think politicians are liars. Everything is done by implication.
So, there’s law, and there’s regulations. The legislature passes laws and then individual government agencies implement the laws by making regulations. The *law* may not mention a thing, but at the level below the law, which the public doesn’t generally see because guess who doesn’t report on it, the thing most definitely gets “mentioned”.
(Sometimes, even then, the thing doesn’t get mentioned, but it happens anyway. This is how we implement racism now. It’s all pushed down to the state and county level. Or the thing is a blanket rule with exceptions for rural areas (the poor farmer! (who just happens to be white)), or exceptions for certain types of labor which just, purely by coincidence, happen to be mostly non-white (e.g., farm *labor* and domestic “help”).)
«Sending a ComfortUnit into this situation was morally irresponsible and a clear violation of contract.»
(77% through “Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells.)
Everything hits different now. The quoted sentence was written in a world where “morally irresponsible” and “violation of contract” mean things, but here we are, in a time when 50.1% of the US electorate believe lol nothing matters.
test — trying to get the fediverse thingie working again. I may have just dumped all my followers unintentionally. 
https://5calls.org/issue/elon-doge-federal-workforce-mass-firing/
More calls to my Senators today, trying to get them to intervene in the mass firing that Musk and the Project 2025 people are engaging in.
At least Budd managed to get his voicemail inbox unclogged, so congrats to his staff for that.
«The big question for markets is whether Germany can reform the “debt brake” that limits its structural budget deficit to just 0.35% of output.
Europe’s largest economy contracted for a second straight year in 2024, with critics blaming the debt brake for years of underinvestment.»
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/02/23.html?utm_source=sp_ma
«As I keep saying, the job of running a nightclub is managing plumbing disasters. Everything else is a sideline.»
Good to know, in case I decide to chuck it all and open a bar.
Another wee test post.
It might all be in the excerpt.
Which means I get to write the post twice. Sigh.
