Insurers adjusting to the Inflation Reduction Act by changing fees, co-pays

New research reveals the Inflation Reduction Act’s $2,000 cap may not help most Medicare beneficiaries as insurers raise drug costs and deductibles. Image (c) ConsumerAffairs

A core promise of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden in 2022, was to lower the cost of prescription medications for Americans, particularly older adults on Medicare. But new research suggests the reality may be more complicated — and costlier — for most beneficiaries. Continue reading →

I would say I have never seen more collective confusion, and emotion-driven, unproductive, though self-congratulating drivel. But I have. It has become a distinctive of the left.

What a busy weekend it was! Hardly any time to celebrate pops or papas with all that is happening in the world.

We had the horrific assassination of lawmakers in Minnesota, which we will absolutely be addressing in a later post.

We had the Army’s 250th Anniversary Parade. What were y’all’s thoughts on this? I loved it. But I love history, America, and the military. More than once I found myself googling a fact or “Well, how about that-ing” to new information. For instance, because of the Big Red 1 flag on my neighbor’s house…I now know he is not to be trifled with, and also where I have now instructed my children to go if danger presents itself. Go, Arny! Continue reading →

Jerome Powell

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, told Newsmax on Thursday he has a simple message for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell after the agency’s board declined to lower interest rates this week: Resign.

The Fed on Wednesday held its benchmark interest rate steady at 4.25% to 4.5%, keeping borrowing rates elevated for Americans for the fourth straight time. The last time it cut rates was in December, by a quarter of a percent. President Donald Trump responded later that day in a post on Truth Social calling Powell “a real dummy, who’s costing America $Billions!” Continue reading →

Every aspect of our society is targeted – from our money supply, to the energy system, to our food supply, to the education system, to the sanctity of our own home – to the very system of freedom created by our founders. It’s all under attack. Continue reading →

The federal government paid $79 billion in Covid-19 relief to individuals who likely used phony or stolen Social Security numbers (SSNs), according to a recent report from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC).

Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 and subsequent legislation, Uncle Sam shelled out $5 trillion to counteract the economic damage wreaked by federal, state, and local policies that shuttered businesses and put millions out of work.

Among the largest pandemic-relief programs were the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (COVID-19 EIDL) program and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and the Department of Labor’s (DOL) pandemic Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. Those programs accounted for an estimated $400 billion worth of fraud, according to 2023 reports from the SBA’s and DOL’s inspectors general. Continue reading →

In a recent interview, Bill Clinton was asked if he thought Biden was competent to serve as president.

“I thought he was a good president,” Clinton answered.

He mentioned he had several talks with Biden and said he never noticed a cognitive decline. Really, Bill? Maybe that was because you are on a mental decline yourself. Or perhaps you enjoy exhibiting an obtuse loyalty to fellow Democrats.

Ben Garrison
grrrgraphics.com
June 6, 2025

Do you remember the painting at Epsteins place? ~ Editor

Continue reading →

‘Out Of His Mind’: Critics Aghast At Trump’s ‘Detached From Reality’ New Message
Trump shares a lot of outlandish messages on his social media pages, but critics say a single repost over the weekend might be his most “unhinged” yet.

Trump on Saturday night reposted a message on Truth Social claiming that former President Joe Biden had been executed in 2020 and replaced by “clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.”

Since returning to the White House, Trump has continued to promote conspiracy theories, and has even elevated conspiracy theorists to key positions… (Continue to full article)

‘Shooting Himself in the Foot‘: Trump Reportedly Handicapping His Own Presidency
Trump is handicapping his own “support system” because of an outdated grudge, according to a conservative analyst.

The problem is that people like the president and the people around him don’t like organizations like the NSC, because they’re full of experts. They’re full of people who work the problem. And that doesn’t go very well when he says, ‘I want to do x, y, and z,’ and they say, ‘Well, there, you know, you can do whatever you want, Mr. President, but there are problems with that. Here are some costs. Here are some things that you have to worry about.

This president doesn’t want to hear any of that stuff. And the NSC exists to tell him stuff like that. That’s what it’s there for. It’s the president’s kind of personal foreign policy, interagency support staff and think tank all rolled into one supposedly or normally headed by a national security advisor who gives him the best advice, handles all these contending institutions and opinions… (Continue to full article)

‘We Cannot Throw the Legacy of This Country Away‘
Clinton opened up about current President Donald Trump and his administration during an appearance on CBS “Sunday Morning,” this week.

“Look, we’ve never seen anything like this before in my lifetime,” Clinton said. “Somebody that says, ‘Whatever I want should be the law of the land. It’s my way or the highway.’ And most Americans don’t agree with that.”

I think that (Trump) has paid a price for this, you know, name-calling and throwing his weight around.

“I think it’s made him less popular to the point where … look, only elections are going to change this. But I do think the courts are getting their dander up. I think him shutting law firms out of representing their clients before federal agencies in federal buildings because he doesn’t agree with their position — that ain’t America. We’ve never done that. The whole purpose of having a legal system is to have both sides be heard… (NOTE: Stay tuned for MORE regarding the Clinton Story!) (Continue to full article)

Trump Exhibits ‘Mental Incapacity‘ and ‘Cognitive Decline‘
Trump has faced criticism regarding his cognitive state since his return to the White House. While he boasts about being in good health, an expert has shared a different opinion

Similar to his first term as president, Donald Trump has continued to tout his competence, the brilliance of his team, and bash his predecessors, while also going on random tangents during rally speeches and speaking to the media. However, a communications expert and Trump author has expressed that Trump’s actions and speech also signify a mental incapacity

His lack of focus makes it seem as though he’s experiencing cognitive decline, that his brain is not well-disciplined, and he’s unable to maintain a thought and carry it through a logical conclusion… (Continue to full article)

Musk calls for Trump’s IMPEACHMENT
Musk unleashed a fresh round of tweets late Thursday afternoon, calling for President Trump to be impeached and declaring that SpaceX would begin decommissioning a spacecraft essential to NASA’s operation — though he later backtracked on this threat.

Trump’s threat to cancel billions of dollars of government contracts with Musk’s companies has ignited a new round of escalation in the explosive civil war between the two former allies.

Musk, the world’s richest man, also spent much of the afternoon tweeting about Trump’s alleged ties to notorious sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein… (Continue to full article)

When I was a kid, the postman semi-annually delivered a booklet-sized mail-order catalog with an odd mix of hundreds of household gadgets and cheap novelties: personalized pencils, cat toys, jumping beans and kitschy doorstops, et al.

The catalog also displayed the above-pictured LP cover of Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast mockudrama. As did the sensationalistic record cover, the catalog’s caption said that panicked Americans ran screaming into the streets or had heart attacks after hearing a radio report that Martians had invaded the US; specifically, my native New Jersey. Intrigued, I uncharacteristically asked my mother to buy the record. She declined. Continue reading →

Shocking documents declassified by the CIA have revealed a secret mission to find Nazi leader Adolf Hitler – 10 years after he supposedly died.

According to multiple reports from the CIA archives, agents in South America were convinced the dictator was still alive in the 1950s and changed his name to remain under cover.

One operative even said they found a photo in Colombia showing a man hou resembled the infamous Nazi.

Despite Allied forces finding a burnt body suggesting Hitler took his own life in a German bunker in April of 1945, documents declassified in 2020 revealed that US intelligence officials were trying to locate his ‘hideout in Argentina’ just months after World War II ended.

Over the next decade, that search apparently never ended, and the CIA was still talking with informants who allegedly knew about Hitler’s secret escape in 1955. Continue reading →

Courts today routinely override not only executive policy decisions, but the constitutional authority of presidents – thereby replacing legal clarity with judicial chaos. But the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to correct the course

The Supreme Court has once again agreed to hear a case that strikes at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers. In Trump v. CASA – heard Thursday, May 15, in oral arguments – the justices will decide “Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.” Continue reading →

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of President Donald Trump, allowing him to dismiss heads of independent agencies, including Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Court noted that preventing Trump from terminating these officials would impose greater burdens than those faced by Wilcox and Harris, who argued they could only be removed for cause under federal law. Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed that the decision balances the executive power vested in the presidency. Continue reading →

If insulting terms for Donald Trump are your jam, Wednesday was a very good day indeed.

First, it was revealed that Wall Street investors are using the term “TACO ― Trump Always Chickens Out” to describe Trump’s economic policies and his erratic approach of announcing massive tariffs that cause the markets to plunge, only to back off a short time later, allowing them to rise back up again.

Savvy market watchers are taking advantage of “TACO” by buying beaten-down stocks, waiting for Trump to wimp out and take advantage of the inevitable rebound. Continue reading →

Who’s driving the Auto-pen?

Joe Biden wasn’t just asleep at the wheel during his term, he wasn’t even at the wheel. He was so incapacitated that he was reduced to a mere figurehead who spent most of his time at his beach house or on vacation.

For all the Democrats’ hyperbole about ‘our democracy,’ there was very little of it going on at the White House. It was an autocracy, or to be even clearer, an autopen-ocracy.

All of the documents signed using the autopen should be rendered null and void. It’s easy to see which orders were signed with the autopen because the signatures are exactly the same. It’s time to throw out those documents along with the autopen machine itself.

Ben Garrison
grrrgraphics.com
May 29, 2025

“If one company or small group of people manages to develop godlike digital superintelligence, they could take over the world. At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.” ~ Elon Musk

The Deep State is not going away. It’s just being replaced.

Replaced not by a charismatic autocrat or even a shadowy bureaucracy, but by artificial intelligence (AI) – unfeeling, unaccountable, and immortal.

As we stand on the brink of a new technological order, the machinery of power is quietly shifting into the hands of algorithms. Continue reading →

Democrats have ceased to function as a political party and should now be regarded as a terrorist organization operating from within the very halls of our government to undermine our country…It’s called TREASON! Conspiracies no longer

Instead of True Confessions, we need to begin a series of True Conspiracies. Confessions are rare, but conspiracies are plentiful, especially the ones that have come true.

We have documented nearly all of the Democrat scandals that we believe have serious merit, including the 2020 election fraud, the conspiracies surrounding COVID, the vaccine-related deaths, and the global cooling hoax of the seventies that evolved into global warming and then simply climate change. We documented the phony Trump/Russian story and noted that 15-20 million unvetted illegal immigrants crossed our ‘closed’ border, along with half a million criminals. We have become well-versed in the two-tiered justice system that the Democrats have implemented, along with the numerous federal judges who have attempted to subvert established law and create new precedents. Continue reading →

Scratch ‘n’ Sniff

Social Security Shock as Retired Workers Set to Get Historic Payout Starting in June
Payouts to Social Security beneficiaries are a necessity, and cover a part of the expenses of at least nine out of ten retirees, as per Gallup polls.

The average monthly benefit for each category in April was about $1,755.57.

However, due to an increase in the cost of living, the June payout will surpass $2,000 for the first time in the SSA’s history… (Continue to full article)

U.S. Genocidal Madness Has Never Ended!
How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past, assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation.

Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies

Those of us who write about the heinous Israeli genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, although we are most often met with blind indifference by the bulk of society, continue to expose this evil in the midst of this torturous death of innocents… (Continue to full article)

Thanks To Donald Trump, The American Dream Is Dead
Donald Trump’s so-called “voluntary deportation” program is yet another example of how he is killing the alleged “American Dream.”

There was once a time when the phrase “The American Dream” evoked images of opportunity—a place where hard work could elevate anyone, no matter their race, origin, or zip code; a melting pot of possibility. But in today’s America, that dream isn’t just fading—it’s been put on life support, and Donald Trump is hovering over it with a pillow.

With the latest rollout of Trump’s “voluntary deportation” initiative—complete with a convenient app, CBP Home, and a $1,000 travel stipend—his administration has made one thing painfully clear: the American Dream is no longer inclusive… (Continue to full article)

The U.S. Debt Crisis Is Worse Than You Think
America’s $36 trillion debt has experts on edge — here’s what’s really at stake.

Major firms are sounding the alarm on America’s growing debt problem with Moody’s recently downgrading the country’s credit rating. Brett Ewing, chief market strategist at First Franklin Financial Services, joined TheStreet to break down just how serious the problem is and what it could mean for everyday Americans.

We’re sitting around $40 trillion in debt, and we’re running close to a 7% deficit right now.

We still have a lot of room to work with to get that under control over the next decade. And there’s some major things that can be done here in the short run… (Continue to full article)

“Liberation Day” is Cancelled: Trump’s Global Tariffs Ruled Illegal
The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump did not have the authority to set unilateral tariffs

A federal court ruled that Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he attempted to set unilateral 10% tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners.

The U.S. Court of International Trade said that the president’s emergency powers justification for the tariffs didn’t pass muster, in a ruling issued on Wednesday. The three-judge panel objected to the Trump administration’s argument that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act granted “unbounded tariff authority” to the executive branch. In their ruling, they called for a narrow reading of the act and the powers it grants… (Continue to full article)

Goodbye to Traditional Gas Stations in the US
Walmart, Costco, and Dollar General are jumping headfirst into the fuel business in the US

Electrification may be the future, but Walmart, Costco, and Dollar General seem unfazed, they’re becoming gas giants. Wait, what? That’s right. These three major retailers are opening more gas stations. But don’t be mistaken. This isn’t an improvised move, it’s a calculated response to the slow energy transition and the need to build customer loyalty in a fiercely competitive environment.

Of course, it’s all about evolve or die. So these three giants have decided to adapt by turning their parking lots into fuelling centres, but not for electric vehicles. Walmart has already announced more than 45 new gas stations across the U.S., while Costco is extending the hours of its members-only fuel stations. Dollar General, meanwhile, is experimenting with gas stations in the southern part of the country. But weren’t we transitioning to electric? What’s going on??? (Continue to full article)

SCOTUS Sides with Trump to Revoke Legal Status from 300k Venezuelans
Come hell or high water, President Trump is going to keep his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens out of your country and god bless him for it.

President Trump is doing everything he can to keep illegal aliens out of this country as well as put an end to Biden era programs that allowed for a mass invasion under the guise of compassion or even “legal status.”

He’s getting a little help from the high court. .. (Continue to full article)

Trump: Executive Order Will Cause Drug Prices to Fall
Trump says prescription drug prices will drop in a matter of weeks due to an executive order he signed.

The order calls on the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker lower prices for drugs.

If a deal isn’t reached, a new rule will kick in that will tie the price of what the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries… (Continue to full article)

More than half of Americans want to see mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants

Deportation Flights to Venezuela Soar, Outpacing Previous Four-Year Total
At least 3,078 Venezuelans have been deported since January, compared to 3,256 deported over the entire 2019–2023 period under both the Trump and Biden administrations

In just four months, the Trump administration has deported more Venezuelans than during the previous four years combined, according to a new report.

The surge comes as President Donald Trump intensifies immigration enforcement, including the removal of women and children – despite claims that deportations are targeting those with criminal records. According to Venezuelan nonprofit Votoscopio, which tracks repatriation flights, 273 women and 29 children are among the recent deportees… (Continue to full article)

Democrats Push to Strip Trump of Power Over U.S. Marshals as Judges Face Threats
Amid a surge in threats against federal judges, Senate Democrats will formally introduce legislation Thursday to transfer control of the U.S. Marshals Service to the court system itself.

The legislation specifies that the presidential administration would lose its authority over the Marshals. The law enforcement agency is currently part of the Department of Justice, and among other things, it is tasked with protecting federal judges, courthouses and court workers.

Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who is leading the effort, said the change would help insulate U.S. Marshals from possible interference and politicization by the Trump administration… (Continue to full article)

Colombian Woman Charged With Illegally Voting in 2024 Election Stealing $400,000 in Taxpayer Funded Benefits
Lina Maria Orovio-Hernandez allegedly lived under a stolen identity for 20 years, illegally voting and obtaining $400,000 in US benefits

Lina Maria Orovio-Hernandez, 59, also obtained welfare benefits, a REAL ID and eight other state ID’s, the Justice Department said.

Orovio-Hernandez allegedly used the stolen identity to submit a fraudulent voter registration in January 2023, and cast a ballot in last year’s presidential election, prosecutors said. She was captured on surveillance camera at a bank wearing an “I voted” sticker on Nov. 5, 2024, Election Day, according to court documents… (Continue to full article)

Trump Wins Multiple Manufacturing Deals
Trump has announced significant foreign and domestic investments totaling nearly $9 trillion since he took office. Many of the investments reportedly originate from prior announcements, causing critics to express concern about their accuracy. Trump asserted that the commitments demonstrate the success of his economic policies, which have focused on lower taxes, tariffs, energy expansion, and advancements in artificial intelligence.

Trump said, “I think we probably have close to $9 trillion of investments coming into this country.” He added, “If you look at other presidents, there’s never been anything like that.” (Continue to full article)