The Republican Party has systematically destroyed the myth of their competence they tried to sell for decades. They are bad at economics, are the ones who have expanded the deficit, are responsible for almost every recession, can't hold a candle to the Dems at creating jobs.
Republicans are against law and order, led by a criminal, support obstruction of justice, condemn the FBI. Republicans are actively opposed to our national security, support our enemies, condemn our generals, our fallen heroes, our intelligence community.
Republicans could not have less to do with the party of Lincoln & debase his memory every time they invoke his name as a shield against their deep racism. There is only one thing the GOP is known for that has survived their public failings, declarations of disloyalty & crimes.
That is that the serve the richest among us, seek to lower their taxes, remove regulations from their companies, seek to serve the few on behalf of the many. Indeed, that truth about them endures because it is their raison d'être and all the other stuff was just election slogans.
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I've been around long enough to watch banker greed & incompetence drive the LatAm financial crisis of the 80s, the S&L crisis, the junk bond scandals, the tech bubble's bursting, the mortgage backed securities market blow up, & many more predictable, avoidable disasters.
And sure as you can set your clock by their failures, you can also count on them demanding less regulation or promising "self-regulation" in up markets and then pleading for bailouts (lest we inflame systemic risks) when they screw up.
They get rich, they play fast and loose with other people's money, the government always has their back and good times and bad, they then get richer still (look up Wall St. bonuses in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.) You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist...
On @TheLastWord just now @Lawrence asked me how Oleg Deripaska could get away with declaring the Russian economy was in crisis--in Russia--with a tough critique of Putin's disregard for law and order.
I gave what I thought was a reasonable answer. But I missed a key point.
I said that Putin was under fire from many former close allies from Prigozhin to the Kazakhs who are flirting with the US to the Chinese who are speaking volumes with their measured responses to his requests for help. But of course, there is another potential factor.
Deripaska knows a lot. Deripaska was squarely in the middle of Putin's efforts to compromise and steer Trump and the US government. Deripaska surely knows immense amounts about Putin's finances. And he also knows how to protect himself with this information.
When I wrote that we had created a system that makes mass shootings likely, several folks responded that "we" had not, that it was all the GOP, that they were against our gun laws. The GOP has blood on its hands, no doubt. They are a huge part of the problem.
But if we in the majority want change and it is not coming then we need to ask ourselves why. We are all responsible for outcomes in our system whether we agree with them or not. We need to change our tactics. We need to make reforming gun laws a higher priority.
We need to hold the system hostage as the GOP does to their priorities. We need to reject halfway measures. We need to campaign to defeat gun advocates and even the "quiet" go-along, get-along pols who make the NRA agenda possible.
Rather than asking “How can this be happening again?” after each mass shooting it is time to acknowledge it keeps happening because we have created the ideal conditions for never ending bloodshed.
Our gun laws not only make it likely we will see constant carnage, they make it a certainty. Until we accept that a heavily armed society is one that actually encourages and accepts the slaughter of innocents, we will never be safe.
Until we end the grotesque misinterpretation of our second amendment that somehow all Americans have a right to own weapons of modern warfare our streets will run with blood.
Some mornings, I just can't. I don't have the patience to read the "news." Today, my special problem are stories that are written as though they are about someone or something but are actually about the media, the reporters writing them.
Examples include an NYT story today saying that @VP is "struggling" to define herself--when what she is struggling against is unfair coverage and false narratives about her that are perpetuated by the media itself.
We also have a WaPo story saying Americans don't believe Biden has gotten much done during his first 2 years in office. Since it's a provable fact he has gotten a historic amount done, this is actually a story about media failure written as though its about a Biden failure.
I've seen some critiques of my Ukraine article over the weekend suggesting that providing more aid to that country is the equivalent of inviting all out war with Russia. Nonsense. Not just nonsense, but an argument repeatedly revealed by cold hard facts to be fallacious.
Think how often you read over the past year that if the US and NATO provided aid to Ukraine, javelins to Ukraine, long range missiles to Ukraine, intelligence to Ukraine, training to Ukraine, armored vehicles to Ukraine, tanks to Ukraine...it would mean war with Russia.
Russia warned of it, to be sure, because it was in their interest to deter the behavior. But it never turned into such a war, did it? In fact, by providing such weapons, not only was UKR protected against a brutal aggressor but Russia was revealed to be much weaker than expected.