There will be tremendous panic, economic uncertainty and dread exactly one week from today as America’s MAGA nihilists hold a gun to the nation’s head and threaten default. The debt ceiling crisis is completely manufactured and self-inflicted. It is the product of bad faith negotiations and bad faith politicians who have allowed the stupidity that girds their daily gamesmanship to become a serious threat to the prosperity and future of the American people. The appalling spectacle is being cheered by America’s adversaries and competitors who love seeing the self-inflicted damage to America’s stature, power, prestige and credibility that they could never hope to inflict.
I have not watched any of videos that must exist of Taliban beheadings. Why would any reasonable, decent moral person watch such inhuman acts? So now, unless I turn my phone off, stop watching or reading any news outlet, I will witness the beheading of America. Nice, Putin must be dancing with joy. The MAGA gaggle will strut and preen and claim that they really shown us how governing is done.
The King of debt and bankruptcy will claim that only he could have negotiated a deal that Old Joe could not.
The hypocrisy and dishonesty and unreasonableness is lower than whale poop which is at the bottom of the ocean.
The world has invested in us and MAGA’s contribution is “screw you”
GOP hypocrisy on this is absolutely stunning. What created most of the $31.4 trillion US debt? Aside from war-mongering and the engineered Financial Crash of 2008, it was their massive tax breaks (reducing revenues) over the decades and gargantuan "corporate wealthfare" for the fat-cat "welfare kings" in the biggest, baddest industries (--from military contractors to oil/gas extractors/pollutors, from Big Pharma to Big Banking).
So, as usual, the GOP -- this time under McCarthy, MTG and other nutjobs in this corrupt Congress -- wants to once again balance the budget on the backs of the overburdened, collapsing middle-class and the poor by cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, etc.
The GOP always considers entitlements for the rich to be absolutely fine, but not any govt help for the hundreds of millions who struggle.
There's one more point to be made here-- i'm well aware that Medicare/Medicaid costs have spiraled out of control over the decades, contributing greatly to the US debt.
But that is directly attributable to the USDA, FDA and NIH refusing to promote the shift to a largely plant-based diet as urged by the nation's finest nutrition scientists.
Due to terrible conflicts of interest with Big Ag, the aforementioned US agencies have cont'd over the decades to promote heavy consumption of meat, dairy, eggs and junk food-- which have directly caused the tragic (avoidable!) epidemics of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, strokes, etc etc etc ad nauseam.
Americans would be FAR HEALTHIER and the Medicare/Medicaid expenditures FAR LOWER had there been a serious move to
--create healthier school-lunch programs for our kids and grandkids,
--public service announcements encouraging healthier family meals and eating-habits by parents and other adults, i.e., more fruits, vegetables, non-GMO whole grains, legumes, nuts/seeds,
--tax breaks for supermarket chains and restaurants & fast-food chains promoting these healthier foods for their customers,
--impose punitive "sin taxes" on the animal foods & junk foods causing so much disease,
--encourage editors of "food pages" in newspapers, magazines and other outlets to shift their readers toward whole-food plant-based diets.
The U.S. could have saved at least SEVERAL TRILLIONS of DOLLARS in debt from the 1970s onward in the Medicare/Medicaid budget had this widespread dietary shift happened.
It's always possible to implement these changes to save millions of lives and save trillions of dollars going forward, but we would need a LOT MORE PROGRESSIVES in Congress, the White House, and appointees to head the aforementioned and other agencies.
If people had to pay Medicare premiums based on their risk factors - smoking, meat eating, general unhealthy lifestyle - as opposed to everyone paying the same income adjusted amount, behavior would change. Such a change would never pass because of folks screaming “my body my choice” (apparently not so much if you are of childbearing age and capable of giving birth) and the special interests who have lots of money and employ millions of folks creating, marketing and selling unhealthy items.
I’m ashamed to say that, up until this comment, I had not thought of this from this angle. But it does make sense & has given me something to research. On a personal level I decided to change my diet years ago. I cut out all carbonated beverages including all soda. No processed meats, especially bacon & I love bacon. No red meat. Mostly fish & chicken. No fried foods, junk food or sweets. I do allow sweets during the month of December, but usually don’t eat that much because it makes me lethargic. I have never smoked & only drink on holidays. These changes have made me feel so much better. There’s really no downside to it. I’m saving money, going to the dr less & my meds have decreased.
Timothy, thank you for sharing this info. I’m really interested in this & want to learn more. Can you recommend a few books, articles, etc that I can start with? I really feel I need to know this. Thank you, again. Now, get me started....
Hi Cindy, i salute you (and i'm sure your body thanks you) on all the changes you've made and your aspiration to go further with this. Book recommendations? Here are a few:
1) *How Not to Die,* by Dr. Michael Greger, whose website NutritionFacts.org is the world's premier site amassing all the scientific evidence for going plant-based for health. You can search the site by topic and also sign up for his free weekly blog posts and videos.
2) *The World Peace Diet* by Will Tuttle, the most soulful, spiritual book ever written about what we do to animals and the need to go vegan for them, for the environment, and for human health (it's arguably an even better book than John Robbins' classic of the late 1980s, *Diet for a New America,* which is also still worth reading).
3) *Eat Like You Care,* by Prof. Gary Francione (Rutgers Univ. prof. of law and ethics), the world's leading advocate for animal rights and an abolitionist approach (no more exploitation of animals).
Thank you for getting back with me! I have a group of women friends that are all retired, from different backgrounds & we all love learning, love democracy & are eager to better ourselves & our communities. It sounds like we’re a bunch of do gooders but our primary goal is to fight depression, anxiety & stress that has taken over in the last 8 years. We’re all pretty busy during election season but this is the kind of info that is useful to plant the seed (pun intended) to make some changes. I will keep you posted. Thanks, again.
Please add to a healthy life style the benefits to the climate agenda of the above; we’ll all be dead from extinction soon enough if we don’t address climate including appropriate agricultural practices. Grow food for people not livestock to eat.
Right on, Judith. I've actually mentioned this numerous times in comments at the Warning, and in one of my remarks in this thread cited the landmark Goodland & Anhang study of 2009 showing "at least 51% of GHGs" to be caused by the livestock industry, a finding which of course has been largely ignored by the mainstream media personnel, who always insist on using the older, obsolete "14.5%" figure advanced by the UN FAO which Goodland & Anhang rebutted as far too low, since it used a ridiculously too long time frame for methane, and humanity and all other species on Earth don't have the long time frame to solve climate catastrophe.
I don’t think people will shift to a plant based diet because government agencies encourage it. Look how successful vaccination has been over the past three years.
Well, it's worth a try 🙏..... What else will save us? Let the govt hire psychologists to find ways to best encourage people with public education campaigns. Heck, corporations have been using them since the early 20th century to manipulate people to buy their products and services....
Yes, Janet-- thanks for reinforcing these points that i've mentioned a number of times in comment threads here at Steve's Substack columns. According to R.Goodland & J.Anhang (WorldWatch, 2009) of the World Bank environmental impact dept., meat & dairy were/are contributing "at least 51% of GHGs" (greenhouse gas emissions). That number was never refuted in any science journal except for a half-hearted attempt by one guy who was quickly and persuasively rebutted by Goodland and Anhang in the same journal.
Paul Hawken's Drawdown Project about solutions to climate catastrophe accepted that percentage figure researched by Goodland & Anhang.
Ever-encroaching right-wing fascism (aka "Christian Nationalism") is justifiably the recurring major topic in The Warning, but we need to expand the meaning of THE WARNING to include all these eco-horrors, individual human health (& finance) horrors, and the ongoing hideous nightmare of how we brutally violate animals' rights by confining, torturing and slaughtering them-- some 70 BILLION needlessly killed in the U.S. alone each and every year all because of people's ignorantly (or even deliberately) cruel eating habits....
It's over 1 trillion animals killed worldwide when one includes creatures of the sea slaughtered by the "seafood industry," which could be cultivating algae and sea-plants instead of agonized sentient beings.
Thanks for listening.
It's the major ongoing injustice and life-destroying danger of our era and i'll keep talking about it as long as i'm alive....
I admire your passion for healthy eating. Approaching 82 years of age, I am well aware of the damage caused by my love of sweets and meat and dairy. I am making an effort to change because I don't think it's too late. The amount of money my supplemental health insurance is paying for the very expensive medications I need to treat diabetes and heart disease is appalling. Multiply by astronomical numbers of seniors in the same situation and you're talking real money. Keep telling us what we need to hear!!
Dear Karen, i wish you everything wonderful on any shift you make toward healthier eating.
A study published Feb. 8, 2022 in the scientific PLoS Med journal showed how, even in our 80s, people could add an avg of 3.4 years of longevity and also better health by shifting to whole-food plant-based diets. (People adopting the same diet in their earlier years, from 20s to 60s, can benefit with much greater longevity.)
Here's the link to an easily read synopsis article:
An accurate analogy for whale poop would be democracy.
Baleen whale poop is a nutrient for phytoplankton, which, like trees on land, provide us with oxygen.
When the whale deep dives to feed they circulate/cycle the poop/phytoplankton to the bottom ensuring those dwelling below the surface receive nutrients necessary to survive.
Whales are cetaceans advocating for altruism on land and sea.
Your comments said it best, “detached from consequences”. This is the behavior when individuals are able to do whatever the hell they want to do. Because absolutely NOTHING has happen to any elected officials within the MAGA camp, we can expect this kamikaze behavior to continue.
GOP holding a gun to the nation's head: "The decision to default is a premeditated decision to weaken America and hurt Americans to punish President Joe Biden. It isn’t policy. It’s pathological." -Yes, "detached from consequences". Defeat Maga: Preserve Democracy!
Thank you to Steve and to everyone who responded. Is a significant part of America too far gone to understand or to care? It’s so crazy here that Gym Jordan is talking about prosecuting Hillary again. I guess his hearings haven’t worked out. I am deeply concerned that many of our fellow citizens are either liking the antidemocratic, racist, antiSemtic acts that go on now or don’t particularly care. This is how very bad things happen.
We are under attack and the attack has been ongoing for years. Since before 2016, Putin, his 5th column here, and ideological far right ideologues and billionaires whose aims line up with our authoritarian enemies, have been attacking our society and those of other free democracies worldwide. Russia sees us as their primary enemy and they're fighting us through cyber warfare--polluting minds with disinformation and propagand--and launching a variety of active measures. Biden and members of his cabinet need to explain to the American public that we are under cyber attack. When Trump won in 2016, I was watching him and his crime family (the actual crime family) walk in the room and him give his speech. The whole look, feel and content of the moment made me feel like I was watching a political event in Eastern Europe under the Iron curtain. In many respects, I was.
As Keith Olbermann pointed out this morning, you don't negotiate with terrorists, foreign or domestic. Invoke the 14th Amendment, enough of this lunacy! Why, oh why didn't Democrats prevent this from happening last December?
I suspect the answer to my own question is two-fold: Machin and Sinema, the same two who would tank a clean debt ceiling bill from passing the Senate now if they could.
You nailed it- absent consequences, and with a generous helping of salacious, beady-eyed sinister reinforcement, the MAGA train moves on down the tracks.
The summation of sordid ignominy and illiterate Dunning Kruger resplendency has subsumed an entire political party, while much of the opposition seeks to adjudicate as if it were business as usual.
By now I really thought the Wall Street-types would have locked Speaker Kevin in a room and read him the riot act. They may have and this may all be performance politics: good for Kevin's base of support, but in reality not going to happen. Again, I wonder who is paying the R's to do this? It's not without cash or favors being exchanged, and it isn't all MAGA-world.
I still think 14th Amendment Article 4 is a potential stopgap for the debt ceiling, and if the R's really want to fight the budget wars, they do it according to the Appropriations process and in setting the FY 2024 Appropriations levels. As we have seen with their "Weaponization of Government" committee and their other sham hearings, they're not really familiar with how this all works. They might want to speak with the House Parliamentarian: they can walk them through the process.
A few weeks ago I watched Margaret Brennan of CBS News ask Ro Khanna if he thought President Biden's non-negotiation stance was untenable. I don't think the congressman pushed back hard enough against the false equivalency and arguably dumb question, but the very question itself underscores how dishonest the mainstream media has become (I'm going under the assumption that Ms. Brennan isn't stupid) and how feckless the Democratic party has become. It should be clear to anyone paying attention that Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the authority to make a deal, and the extremists within his party have NO interest in making a deal. I can only hope that the President's contradictory non-negotiating negotiation strategy is a trap.
All these people whose combined IQ puts them in the Borderline mental disability range can not, and should not be expected to think about or know the consequences of their actions, but, there are people in The House of Representatives and in The United States Senate who do know better, who do know the consequences of these actions, and the fact that they have chosen to sit back and do nothing is disgraceful!
Owning the libs is the contemporary « cutting off your nose to spite your face ».I wonder why the GOP isn’t considering the consequences on their own stock and investments holdings ?
I know one thing for sure, Republicans will blame Joe Biden and Democrats will blame Maga Republicans. Everyone on the hill will be pointing fingers at each other while our retirement funds burn up in a self inflicted dumpster fire. If I was younger and not already in retirement, perhaps I would barely notice. However, that is not my situation and most of my money is tied up in investments. I read about the bread lines of the late 20s into the 30s and it will be interesting of who the people in those lines will blame. I guess we will all have to wait and see. See you in the funny papers.
I have not watched any of videos that must exist of Taliban beheadings. Why would any reasonable, decent moral person watch such inhuman acts? So now, unless I turn my phone off, stop watching or reading any news outlet, I will witness the beheading of America. Nice, Putin must be dancing with joy. The MAGA gaggle will strut and preen and claim that they really shown us how governing is done.
The King of debt and bankruptcy will claim that only he could have negotiated a deal that Old Joe could not.
The hypocrisy and dishonesty and unreasonableness is lower than whale poop which is at the bottom of the ocean.
The world has invested in us and MAGA’s contribution is “screw you”
We are in deep _ _ _ _
GOP hypocrisy on this is absolutely stunning. What created most of the $31.4 trillion US debt? Aside from war-mongering and the engineered Financial Crash of 2008, it was their massive tax breaks (reducing revenues) over the decades and gargantuan "corporate wealthfare" for the fat-cat "welfare kings" in the biggest, baddest industries (--from military contractors to oil/gas extractors/pollutors, from Big Pharma to Big Banking).
So, as usual, the GOP -- this time under McCarthy, MTG and other nutjobs in this corrupt Congress -- wants to once again balance the budget on the backs of the overburdened, collapsing middle-class and the poor by cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, etc.
The GOP always considers entitlements for the rich to be absolutely fine, but not any govt help for the hundreds of millions who struggle.
There's one more point to be made here-- i'm well aware that Medicare/Medicaid costs have spiraled out of control over the decades, contributing greatly to the US debt.
But that is directly attributable to the USDA, FDA and NIH refusing to promote the shift to a largely plant-based diet as urged by the nation's finest nutrition scientists.
Due to terrible conflicts of interest with Big Ag, the aforementioned US agencies have cont'd over the decades to promote heavy consumption of meat, dairy, eggs and junk food-- which have directly caused the tragic (avoidable!) epidemics of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, strokes, etc etc etc ad nauseam.
Americans would be FAR HEALTHIER and the Medicare/Medicaid expenditures FAR LOWER had there been a serious move to
--create healthier school-lunch programs for our kids and grandkids,
--public service announcements encouraging healthier family meals and eating-habits by parents and other adults, i.e., more fruits, vegetables, non-GMO whole grains, legumes, nuts/seeds,
--tax breaks for supermarket chains and restaurants & fast-food chains promoting these healthier foods for their customers,
--impose punitive "sin taxes" on the animal foods & junk foods causing so much disease,
--encourage editors of "food pages" in newspapers, magazines and other outlets to shift their readers toward whole-food plant-based diets.
The U.S. could have saved at least SEVERAL TRILLIONS of DOLLARS in debt from the 1970s onward in the Medicare/Medicaid budget had this widespread dietary shift happened.
It's always possible to implement these changes to save millions of lives and save trillions of dollars going forward, but we would need a LOT MORE PROGRESSIVES in Congress, the White House, and appointees to head the aforementioned and other agencies.
If people had to pay Medicare premiums based on their risk factors - smoking, meat eating, general unhealthy lifestyle - as opposed to everyone paying the same income adjusted amount, behavior would change. Such a change would never pass because of folks screaming “my body my choice” (apparently not so much if you are of childbearing age and capable of giving birth) and the special interests who have lots of money and employ millions of folks creating, marketing and selling unhealthy items.
I’m ashamed to say that, up until this comment, I had not thought of this from this angle. But it does make sense & has given me something to research. On a personal level I decided to change my diet years ago. I cut out all carbonated beverages including all soda. No processed meats, especially bacon & I love bacon. No red meat. Mostly fish & chicken. No fried foods, junk food or sweets. I do allow sweets during the month of December, but usually don’t eat that much because it makes me lethargic. I have never smoked & only drink on holidays. These changes have made me feel so much better. There’s really no downside to it. I’m saving money, going to the dr less & my meds have decreased.
Timothy, thank you for sharing this info. I’m really interested in this & want to learn more. Can you recommend a few books, articles, etc that I can start with? I really feel I need to know this. Thank you, again. Now, get me started....
Hi Cindy, i salute you (and i'm sure your body thanks you) on all the changes you've made and your aspiration to go further with this. Book recommendations? Here are a few:
1) *How Not to Die,* by Dr. Michael Greger, whose website NutritionFacts.org is the world's premier site amassing all the scientific evidence for going plant-based for health. You can search the site by topic and also sign up for his free weekly blog posts and videos.
2) *The World Peace Diet* by Will Tuttle, the most soulful, spiritual book ever written about what we do to animals and the need to go vegan for them, for the environment, and for human health (it's arguably an even better book than John Robbins' classic of the late 1980s, *Diet for a New America,* which is also still worth reading).
3) *Eat Like You Care,* by Prof. Gary Francione (Rutgers Univ. prof. of law and ethics), the world's leading advocate for animal rights and an abolitionist approach (no more exploitation of animals).
All best wishes to you, Cindy.
Thanks for your references.
Thank you for getting back with me! I have a group of women friends that are all retired, from different backgrounds & we all love learning, love democracy & are eager to better ourselves & our communities. It sounds like we’re a bunch of do gooders but our primary goal is to fight depression, anxiety & stress that has taken over in the last 8 years. We’re all pretty busy during election season but this is the kind of info that is useful to plant the seed (pun intended) to make some changes. I will keep you posted. Thanks, again.
You're welcome Cindy. All best wishes to you and your friends!
Please add to a healthy life style the benefits to the climate agenda of the above; we’ll all be dead from extinction soon enough if we don’t address climate including appropriate agricultural practices. Grow food for people not livestock to eat.
Right on, Judith. I've actually mentioned this numerous times in comments at the Warning, and in one of my remarks in this thread cited the landmark Goodland & Anhang study of 2009 showing "at least 51% of GHGs" to be caused by the livestock industry, a finding which of course has been largely ignored by the mainstream media personnel, who always insist on using the older, obsolete "14.5%" figure advanced by the UN FAO which Goodland & Anhang rebutted as far too low, since it used a ridiculously too long time frame for methane, and humanity and all other species on Earth don't have the long time frame to solve climate catastrophe.
I don’t think people will shift to a plant based diet because government agencies encourage it. Look how successful vaccination has been over the past three years.
Well, it's worth a try 🙏..... What else will save us? Let the govt hire psychologists to find ways to best encourage people with public education campaigns. Heck, corporations have been using them since the early 20th century to manipulate people to buy their products and services....
Janet, people do not care about their health and obesity! Healthy school lunches? Waste of time - going in the trash can!
Yes, Janet-- thanks for reinforcing these points that i've mentioned a number of times in comment threads here at Steve's Substack columns. According to R.Goodland & J.Anhang (WorldWatch, 2009) of the World Bank environmental impact dept., meat & dairy were/are contributing "at least 51% of GHGs" (greenhouse gas emissions). That number was never refuted in any science journal except for a half-hearted attempt by one guy who was quickly and persuasively rebutted by Goodland and Anhang in the same journal.
Paul Hawken's Drawdown Project about solutions to climate catastrophe accepted that percentage figure researched by Goodland & Anhang.
Ever-encroaching right-wing fascism (aka "Christian Nationalism") is justifiably the recurring major topic in The Warning, but we need to expand the meaning of THE WARNING to include all these eco-horrors, individual human health (& finance) horrors, and the ongoing hideous nightmare of how we brutally violate animals' rights by confining, torturing and slaughtering them-- some 70 BILLION needlessly killed in the U.S. alone each and every year all because of people's ignorantly (or even deliberately) cruel eating habits....
It's over 1 trillion animals killed worldwide when one includes creatures of the sea slaughtered by the "seafood industry," which could be cultivating algae and sea-plants instead of agonized sentient beings.
Thanks for listening.
It's the major ongoing injustice and life-destroying danger of our era and i'll keep talking about it as long as i'm alive....
I admire your passion for healthy eating. Approaching 82 years of age, I am well aware of the damage caused by my love of sweets and meat and dairy. I am making an effort to change because I don't think it's too late. The amount of money my supplemental health insurance is paying for the very expensive medications I need to treat diabetes and heart disease is appalling. Multiply by astronomical numbers of seniors in the same situation and you're talking real money. Keep telling us what we need to hear!!
Dear Karen, i wish you everything wonderful on any shift you make toward healthier eating.
A study published Feb. 8, 2022 in the scientific PLoS Med journal showed how, even in our 80s, people could add an avg of 3.4 years of longevity and also better health by shifting to whole-food plant-based diets. (People adopting the same diet in their earlier years, from 20s to 60s, can benefit with much greater longevity.)
Here's the link to an easily read synopsis article:
https://plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/health/meat-dairy-longevity-study/
And here's the link to the original science article:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35134067/
Scary deep _ _ _ _
An accurate analogy for whale poop would be democracy.
Baleen whale poop is a nutrient for phytoplankton, which, like trees on land, provide us with oxygen.
When the whale deep dives to feed they circulate/cycle the poop/phytoplankton to the bottom ensuring those dwelling below the surface receive nutrients necessary to survive.
Whales are cetaceans advocating for altruism on land and sea.
Disagree. Whale poop never reaches the bottom.
It's manna for maga right beneath the spigot.
.
Ok, lower than the Marianas Trench…. That better. You will probably spell check ….
No need to spell check. But I'll bet more daylight gets in there than what the maga crowd is getting now.
Maybe we can get Alex Jones to sell them some phony Vitamin D.
Good one😁
Your comments said it best, “detached from consequences”. This is the behavior when individuals are able to do whatever the hell they want to do. Because absolutely NOTHING has happen to any elected officials within the MAGA camp, we can expect this kamikaze behavior to continue.
GOP holding a gun to the nation's head: "The decision to default is a premeditated decision to weaken America and hurt Americans to punish President Joe Biden. It isn’t policy. It’s pathological." -Yes, "detached from consequences". Defeat Maga: Preserve Democracy!
The one consequence that's part of the plan: they'll blame Biden for the sh*t hitting the fan.
I would take it one more step--the hard core MAGA types WANT a default, as do their Russian allies/masters.
Sad but true.
Thank you to Steve and to everyone who responded. Is a significant part of America too far gone to understand or to care? It’s so crazy here that Gym Jordan is talking about prosecuting Hillary again. I guess his hearings haven’t worked out. I am deeply concerned that many of our fellow citizens are either liking the antidemocratic, racist, antiSemtic acts that go on now or don’t particularly care. This is how very bad things happen.
For whatever it's worth, here's my (wet) dream: taking his cue from Harrison Ford in the "swordsman scene" in Raiders of the Lost Ark — https://www.google.com/search?q=scene+in+raiders+of+the+lost+ark+where+indiana+jones+shoots+swordsman&oq=scene+in+raiders+of+the+lost+ark+where+Indiana+Jones&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgDECEYqwIyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRirAjIHCAQQIRirAjIHCAUQIRirAjIKCAYQIRgWGB0YHjIKCAcQIRgWGB0YHjIKCAgQIRgWGB0YHjIKCAkQIRgWGB0YHtIBCTI1NjE4ajFqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:268f9d79,vid:7YyBtMxZgQs — Joe Biden sits there, listening patiently to Kevin McCarthy go on and on about "fiscal responsibility" and "cutting food stamps" and "how we can't afford the Inflation Reduction Act" and ad infinitum, and then, with the same "OK, I've had enough of this" gesture from the film, simply whips out the 14th Amendment and blows McCarthy to smithereens!
Excellent -get tough Biden!
We are under attack and the attack has been ongoing for years. Since before 2016, Putin, his 5th column here, and ideological far right ideologues and billionaires whose aims line up with our authoritarian enemies, have been attacking our society and those of other free democracies worldwide. Russia sees us as their primary enemy and they're fighting us through cyber warfare--polluting minds with disinformation and propagand--and launching a variety of active measures. Biden and members of his cabinet need to explain to the American public that we are under cyber attack. When Trump won in 2016, I was watching him and his crime family (the actual crime family) walk in the room and him give his speech. The whole look, feel and content of the moment made me feel like I was watching a political event in Eastern Europe under the Iron curtain. In many respects, I was.
Why are we so powerless against this vicious minority who is trying to turn us into a Russian colony?
As Keith Olbermann pointed out this morning, you don't negotiate with terrorists, foreign or domestic. Invoke the 14th Amendment, enough of this lunacy! Why, oh why didn't Democrats prevent this from happening last December?
I suspect the answer to my own question is two-fold: Machin and Sinema, the same two who would tank a clean debt ceiling bill from passing the Senate now if they could.
You nailed it- absent consequences, and with a generous helping of salacious, beady-eyed sinister reinforcement, the MAGA train moves on down the tracks.
The summation of sordid ignominy and illiterate Dunning Kruger resplendency has subsumed an entire political party, while much of the opposition seeks to adjudicate as if it were business as usual.
L.F.G.
They need to go.
By now I really thought the Wall Street-types would have locked Speaker Kevin in a room and read him the riot act. They may have and this may all be performance politics: good for Kevin's base of support, but in reality not going to happen. Again, I wonder who is paying the R's to do this? It's not without cash or favors being exchanged, and it isn't all MAGA-world.
I still think 14th Amendment Article 4 is a potential stopgap for the debt ceiling, and if the R's really want to fight the budget wars, they do it according to the Appropriations process and in setting the FY 2024 Appropriations levels. As we have seen with their "Weaponization of Government" committee and their other sham hearings, they're not really familiar with how this all works. They might want to speak with the House Parliamentarian: they can walk them through the process.
Although your warning is depressing, your prose is so eloquent. Thank you
A few weeks ago I watched Margaret Brennan of CBS News ask Ro Khanna if he thought President Biden's non-negotiation stance was untenable. I don't think the congressman pushed back hard enough against the false equivalency and arguably dumb question, but the very question itself underscores how dishonest the mainstream media has become (I'm going under the assumption that Ms. Brennan isn't stupid) and how feckless the Democratic party has become. It should be clear to anyone paying attention that Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the authority to make a deal, and the extremists within his party have NO interest in making a deal. I can only hope that the President's contradictory non-negotiating negotiation strategy is a trap.
If Trump tells Greene and the MAGAts to default, they will try to force one.
We need to start calling what is going on in our government as well as other governments around the world what is really going on: FASCISM
All these people whose combined IQ puts them in the Borderline mental disability range can not, and should not be expected to think about or know the consequences of their actions, but, there are people in The House of Representatives and in The United States Senate who do know better, who do know the consequences of these actions, and the fact that they have chosen to sit back and do nothing is disgraceful!
Owning the libs is the contemporary « cutting off your nose to spite your face ».I wonder why the GOP isn’t considering the consequences on their own stock and investments holdings ?
I know one thing for sure, Republicans will blame Joe Biden and Democrats will blame Maga Republicans. Everyone on the hill will be pointing fingers at each other while our retirement funds burn up in a self inflicted dumpster fire. If I was younger and not already in retirement, perhaps I would barely notice. However, that is not my situation and most of my money is tied up in investments. I read about the bread lines of the late 20s into the 30s and it will be interesting of who the people in those lines will blame. I guess we will all have to wait and see. See you in the funny papers.