Noteworthy News

[Fireball]

Even though I'm in the affected category, I don't blame them one bit. In fact, I started collecting Social Security benefits at age 62 when I retired. Both because I didn't know what my longevity would be, and when the program would run out of money. I have investments, but I mostly use Social Security for my income. Call me stingy, but I paid into it for 40+ years. It appears that employers these days only match some percentage of an employee's contributions to a 401(k) plan. I had one, but I also had a retirement (pension) account funded by my employer. Companies are more shareholder-focused now, and bedamned to the employees.

That's the trick, yeah, convincing people that the system will run out of money and they will be suckers for having paid in and gotten nothing out.  The truth is that it won't run out of money.  That's a big part of why the nuts selling this lie to the american public keep trying to actively kill the thing, because they know perfectly well it won't die on it's own.

Don't they just want to privatize it so it can be more easily stolen?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not possible to privatize social security. It's right there in the name, the entire purpose of the thing, "privitization" being the very problem it was constructed to solve. They say things like "privatize social security" because saying "get rid of social security" would be politically costly. They want to get rid of it to prove, through their own manipulation, that their core ideology of political nihilism is true. That this leaves a pile of money lying around to be stolen is a nice sideline benefit - probably the main benefit to apolitical hangers on which comprise the majority of the beneficiaries of any such scheme and give them the actual workforce of psuedo-beaurocrats to achieve it - but it's worth calling it exactly what it is at it's base. By hook or by crook, the turd reich intends to destroy the american state. It's not for money, it's for power. Not as a means, but as an end unto itself.

[Paraselene]

Haven't they already borrowed from the social security pot?

[The Grand Nudger]

Admins sometimes borrow from ss by buying special issue t bonds. Yes. This actually increases the pot, rather than decreasing it - and is mandated by law in order to derisk the overall funds. The idea being that it's better that a large pile of money do work making money over time in interest, than just sit there. The trigger for this is when ss takes in more revenue than it pays out both daily (daily..think about that), and over a fiscal year. SS has taken in more than it payed out for decades, the last few years not so - and it's been using the surplus built over that time to cover the gap.

This, mind you, both because and even though the reich keeps adding crazy ass pay for requirements and biting out chunks...and still haven't managed to bankrupt the system. SS will not run out by itself. It has never been at risk of this, and never will be. So long as the laws remain on the books of an american government.......

The hay is made over an issue where, if reich wing gutting policies continue to be implemented, it may drop to about 80% of what it provided previous working generations - which is working exactly as intended. OFC, if life were made so shitty for so many people, the social insurance policy would be stretched thinner than before. The obvious solution here is not to shitcan the social insurance policy...but to make life better for more people. Maybe stop giving people who need money the least more tax breaks, idk, rocket surgery shit - way too complicated for the likes of us. Or, maybe, make the us the kind of country you'd want to and could afford having more than 1.5 kid in? Point being, there are more ways to make it flush than there are to make it shrink, and it's only because we're so very committed to ruining it to prove a point that it would ever shrink at all.

They hate america. If americans do well it proves them wrong, and they won't allow this.

[Ravenshire]

This is how criminal politicians should be treated, but never will be in the US under our current, corrupt system.

[Fake Messiah]

Rape culture in Russia: Putin says child marriage is a “very good tradition”

[The Grand Nudger]

But ofc, and for the same reason people here do. Their precious birth rates and the great replacement.

[Paraselene]

Mass casualty event as explosion blasts Pennsylvania nursing home

......

The cause of the explosion is still not known. There is no word on how many people have been injured.

https://stories-d.apexnews.com/news/deta...ient=opera

[Paraselene]

Chosen by a British TV station to give an “alternative” to the king’s speech, Jimmy Kimmel said it had been a great year for the U.S. “from a fascism perspective.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/world...as-uk.html

[Fake Messiah]

62yo man married a 16yo girl in Alabama with her parents permission, only to get arrested for rape after moving to TN and living as husband and wife.