Editor’s Note: Welcome to new subscribers. Day 170 of the Great Con II. A bill that increases the debt while reducing services to America’s most vulnerable has passed. It reminds me of a time in a previous position where a new conservative administration began to unravel years of proactive work while telling us to reduce staff. I said they had given us a turd and asked us to polish it.

This bill was a polished turd.

Meanwhile, this administration, knowing no bottom in its lies to the public, began purposely holding back defensive weapons from Ukraine, further giving a path to Russian murder and aggression. Ironically, as we celebrate our independence, our partners in Ukraine suffered through their July 4th, trying to keep theirs.

This is not a story about cheese. It’s a story about principled leadership and political theatre. Events this week led me to consider that some readers may not understand the inner workings of Congress, how much of what we see is orchestrated for public consumption, while the reality of how decisions are made and presented is kept behind the curtain (reminder: always remember the lesson from The Wizard of Oz).

In the American political imagination, "government cheese" isn’t a block of processed dairy. It’s a metaphor for the compromises that emerge from Washington’s legislative dairy. As the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” made its way down the conveyor belt, it offered a case study in how the conservative majority manufactures political coverage for its members.

First priority is not to pass a bill that assists working Americans (that’s the con), but to pass a bill that makes this president and wealthy donors happy. The elected member's second priority is their constituents back home, where they will now focus on managing their constituents' perceptions before the actual results are felt.

So the scene of the play must be set.

Let’s observe the orchestrations by the two old Republic warhorses, Senator Susan Collins and Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is the last Republican standing in New England and is up for reelection soon. Her state is rural, aging, and deeply dependent on Medicaid, with over 400,000 Mainers, more than a quarter of the population, relying on it for unaffordable healthcare services. The bill she faced would slash Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, threatening the closure of rural hospitals and the stability of nursing homes. The cuts are estimated to be $5.9 billion to her state alone over the next decade.

She voted no on the bill, citing its “harmful impact” on Medicaid and the abrupt elimination of renewable energy credits.

But that’s not the whole story.

Once the Senate majority knew it had enough votes (with the Vice President’s tie-breaking vote), this freed Collins to act out a carefully choreographed piece of political theater, allowing her to appear independent and principled while still supporting the bill’s advancement over the weekend.

What’s that? You mean Collins could have voted no earlier and stopped the bill from advancing altogether?

Yes, she could have. Instead, the bill passes and her maneuver gives her both plausible deniability and campaign talking points.

This is the government cheese: a product designed to bamboozle voters. It’s a master class in the genre of political theatre, where the appearance of resistance is more valuable than the reality when the outcomes hit home.

Now, let’s look at the other main actor on the stage this time, Senator Lisa Murkowski.

If Collins’s strategy was to look principled, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska’s is to look beneficial to Alaskan voters. Murkowski, considered to be a moderate Republican, publicly lamented the bill’s cuts to SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid, both of which are lifelines in her state. Before she cast her necessary “yes” vote, she secured a goody bag of Alaska-specific carve-outs: exemptions from the strictest new SNAP work requirements, increased payments to reflect the high cost of food, and a temporary shield from Medicaid cuts. Rural hospitals in Alaska will receive a $50 billion national fund.

Rural hospitals elsewhere get cheese.

After the vote, Murkowski was blunt: “Do I support this bill? Not at all. But I made efforts to prioritize Alaska’s needs… I recognize that in numerous regions of the nation, there are Americans who will not benefit from this bill. That concerns me”.

Quite interesting.

Her message to Alaskans is clear: the bill is bad, but she made it less bad for them—even as other Americans must suffer the consequences.

So, just how bad is this bill?

The bill’s focus is on extending $3.8 trillion in tax cuts, which predominantly benefit high-income earners. They added new breaks (time-limited, by the way) for tips and overtime as a marketing gimmick. It’s an easy way to look supportive to the working class rather than offering a real significant change such as increasing the minimum wage.

The crux of the bill is an increase in what I would call the show of force, by putting hundreds of billions of dollars into border security and military, two areas already awash in extreme levels of budget.

To pay for it, the budget slashes Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, cuts SNAP food benefits, and guts the clean energy tax credits. By 2034, 11.8 million more Americans will likely be uninsured, and the safety net for the poor, elderly, and disabled will be further reduced. There’s some speculation on why even put in such cuts when the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will still add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, far exceeding the House version of the bill which had already boasted a $2.4 trillion price tag.

Since most Americans do not read the text of bills, the portrayal of the bill is the real show. In this episode, one actor votes no, but only after helping the bill advance. The other votes yes, but only after extracting concessions. The real audience is the voters back home, who must be convinced that their senator fought for them as the cheese is sliced and served.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose journey through this drama is equally interesting. Tillis voted no, citing the bill’s devastating impact on Medicaid expansion in his state with over 600,000 North Carolinians losing coverage, and rural hospitals closing. He was promptly threatened with a primary challenge by President Trump.

But in a particular Shakespearean way, there’s a twist.

Rather than fight and keep his intentions quiet, Tillis announced he would not seek reelection in 2026, decrying the “partisan gridlock” and the extinction of independent thinking in Washington. “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there any more?” he asked on the Senate floor.

I wondered why he chose to announce his plans now. By removing himself from a future election, he can vote his conscience without having to face a Trump-backed challenger from his own party. Yet by publicly saying it now, it looks spineless. What does it signal to generations of young Americans about simply doing the right thing?

These senators missed a golden opportunity to check such a thuggish bill.

First, the bill does not reduce the deficit—it explodes it, while shifting the burden from the wealthy to the poor and sick. Second, the carve-outs and exceptions are not the product of a principled negotiation. Senator Murkowski allowed her vote to be bought instead of improving the overall bill. Moreover, the spectacle of senators denouncing a bill as harmful, and then voting for it after securing a carveout, is not compromise—it’s abdication of responsibility. It’s the triumph of appearance over substance, of theatre over governance.

There are many reasons people hate their government, and a lot of it is due to the showmanship. We can’t get Americans to take their role in a democracy seriously when everything is treated as theater. The making of government cheese like this is a messy, unappetizing process. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of anyone paying attention.

The real losers are the millions of rural Americans who will find the safety net even worse for them, with their only hospital within fifty miles shuttered and even less ability to cover expenses. There’s a lot in this bill that props up illness and debt and further polarization.

If there is to be a silver lining, a long thin one, I think many of these elected officials who capitulated will be gone in 2026.

Voters will see to it. They'll recognize the damage when they see the debt continue up, while their services and walking around cash go down.

They’ll have grown tired of this government cheese made not in the dairy, but on the Senate floor, stamped with approval by the House—one cruel and stinking slice at a time.

Do people have enough time to dream? Do they get their wonder and curiosity cut short too early by schedule, dogma, and ritual? I happened upon this piece and it is the kind of reading that makes me stop and think.

The amount of discovery in life is endless. This week, astronomers and space enthusiasts discovered an object travelling around in space that hadn’t been noticed before. I was also unaware that there is a canyon on the moon bigger than our own Grand Canyon. Now, if you’ve been to the Grand Canyon, you know what I mean. It is something awesome to behold. I’ve often wondered what the first Native Americans must’ve thought when they came to it. Or the first “white faces” that showed up? I’m sure some of them were explorers, and most likely, in talking with Native Americans, they were told about this large rip in the land, this vastness just beyond description, and then I imagine they were taken to it only to be speechless by what they were seeing.

Much of the Earth has been shaped by collisions with rocks from space, and it appears that one took a good-sized chunk out of the moon as well. Take some moment to reflect on this and consider how much man has risen to behold and work to understand the stars. If we continue to grasp for knowledge like this, to be worthy of the awesome unknown, we will be alright. If we continue to exploit pettiness and differences, we simply will not reach our potential.

Ok. I typically try to give credit when I pick up something from someone else’s post, but now I forget where I got it, but this is brilliant.

I have not been golfing for several years now. As time has passed, I have other areas and hobbies I would rather waste it on. However, not to tarnish anyone who enjoys the sport, I had the opportunity to meet Jack Nicklaus in person. He, his wife, and one of his sons came across as great down-to-earth people.

For me, my brain usually wants to be doing something else, whether reading, writing, or walking through the woods. I was not bad when I played, but I was certainly not good. Just a muddle along type player with a lucky shot every now and then.

The golf shot in this video is beyond belief, and it’s the underreaction that this Scottish bloke is having trouble dealing with.

If you tried to describe this shot to someone, they would think you were crazy. It defies physics. You would’ve thought that time had stopped and an unknown spirit had intervened in some manner. There are quite a few accented f-bombs to deal with, but I hope you enjoy his reaction as much as I did.

And Now….

Keep hope alive and stay busy. Make good trouble. Part of a functioning democracy is to make sure people in power are accountable for the decisions made on your behalf. This isn’t done by violence, but by purposeful involvement (and even a little bit of annoyance). Fill your brain with knowledge. Thirst for it. And above all, work to be a good human.