It's the silly season, which means there's not much hard news to write about. So I thought I'd check in on the Republican Party instead. What are they up to these days? This:
- Refusing to investigate the deadly insurrection of January 6 because it might make Donald Trump look bad.
- Refusing to increase funding for the IRS because that might force rich people to pay the taxes they actually owe.
- Claiming without evidence that the NSA is spying on Tucker Carlson.
- Whining that Facebook hates them, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary.
- Declining to persuade their fellow conservatives to get vaccinated.
- Passing laws that allow Republicans to replace election officials who are insufficiently loyal to the party.
- Complaining endlessly about critical race theory, despite the fact that they still haven't produced much evidence about how racism is actually taught in American classrooms.
- Pretending to negotiate over infrastructure funding.
Missing from this list is anything aimed at actually making the country any better off than it is now. It's all just political theater. I hope they're proud of themselves.
They are very proud and also very successful. They have stymied any attempt to increase taxes on corporations or the rich, and I'm willing to bet they stop the IRS funding increases as well. I see a bloodbath for Democrats in 2022 as they are never going to get anything accomplished in the Senate.
More specifically, what’s missing is anything to make someone other than corporations and very wealthy individuals better off, and since they’re doing just fine, thank you, Republican politicians don’t really have much to do except sabotage and stirring up pointless trouble.
And as for their followers, other than the few very wealthy ones, they’re so out of their minds with anger and resentment that they don’t even notice when somebody (like Biden) tries to do something that would benefit them or somebody else (like Republican politicians) tries to prevent that.
Once more with feeling: the IRS is the police for rich people. The GOP has been defunding the police for decades.
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haha
You forgot blaming Biden for Afghanistan.
I think we can blame him a little. He chose the official day of retreat as SEPTEMBER 11. WTF?
That's Demento Joe showcasing his actual memory capacity by NOT FORGETTING SEPTEMBER 11TH.
Yeah. Biden's Mission Accomplished. I wish he hadn't chosen that triumphalist date.
I don't think it's triumphalist so much as round.
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/07/whack-job-rep-chip-roy-admits-we-want-10
...and planning to stir the pot until midterms.
Chip Roy giving the game away... but doubtful Chuck Todd, Martha Raddatz, George Stephanopoulos, or Chris Wallace will say peep about it.
Remember, too, when the obstructionist GQP ran in 2014 on displacing the ruling Democrat majority in the Senate in order to prove the elephantine party is the one to get things done? Ultimately, all they got done was Putin's assassination of Antonin Scalia & a presidential election win fuelled by Putin's disinformation campaign & pro-natalists's bloodlust for obgyns.
By the way, on Tuesday Fox News reportedly mentioned "critical race theory" 123 times by 2 pm ET.
Who sits there counting that??
One of David Brock's interns.
So basically class warfare on poor and working Americans.
But in 2025, under a Hawley-Gabbard regime, shepherd in the Senate by majority leader J.D. Vance, the workers will be elevated to foot soldiers in the renaissance of American greatness.
"Declining to persuade their fellow conservatives to get vaccinated"
Is putting it mildly: https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-and-other-right-wing-outlets-ramp-anti-vaccine-scare-campaign
Clearly, if you don't want your government to do anything, elect Republicans.
No kidding. And by the way, not doing anything is the entire point. Its really a unique time.
The whole underlying assumption in Kevin's post is "Look what the R's are doing, as compared to what they should be doing."
But these days, there is no "what they should be doing" - its a flawed assumption.
Yikes, I just had to live through four years of a guy making a complete, intentional joke out of the office of the President of the United States. Can you just imagine Trump's autobiography? It would be the first by any President in history completely devoid of any policy.
The Russian/Putin connection to the riot is a huge missing piece. Especially the late November Putin call had with the Trump family. Trump went from announcing concession, to starting a rabble. FBI drops on this are pretty damning.
It's why Republicans are scared. A inquiry is sorta useless when the FbI is already having a quiet inquiry.
Republicans are claiming it's unbelievable the NSA would not see Tucker Carlson as a national security threat.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Or, should we simply see it as Carlson trying to out a US intelligence source among his chain of contacts with the Kremlin?
Where it becomes unbelievable the US intelligence community would not see him as a national security threat.
The Plame Game 2: Electric Boogaloo.
If you say that B-word three times you'll make them appear!
Given his drug history, Gavin Mac Innes is definitely the Candyman.
Are we still pretending republicans are nice decent people with whom we have some minor disagreements? Not me. They are the enemy. It will get violent soon, I think.
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"It's the silly season, which means there's not much hard news to write about. "
Sure, but when is it _not_ the silly season?
The left made the GQP become this.
Fine, but when the Afghanistan civil war brings on incredible bloodshed and cruelty, and then the Taliban take over, it won't be Republicans who are taking the blame.
At first I went along with Biden's Trump-like decision to quickly exit Afghanistan. But I have changed my mind. If many Americans were continuing to get killed there, or our support there is unaffordable, I can see just walking away. But neither is the case.
We stayed in Germany, Japan, and Korea for generations, and things have gone well. You can argue that Afghanistan is a hopeless hell hole, so why bother. But who knows, a generation from now things might improve. Also, if we stayed we'd prevent the rise of a monstrous authoritarian theocracy which will be our enemy.
The Afghan people love the Taliban. And they are a complete failure as a modern society. The only way to save them would have been to exterminate Islam. In Germany they called it denazification. That’s what we should have done. That’s what they need to do now. But they won’t so… to heck with them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
No, the Afghan people love Hindi cinema & Champions League soccer, both if which will be proscribed by Mullah Crenshaw's men, with those caught viewing either executed by beheading in the national ex-soccer stadium.
The same kind of people in the hollers of Appalachia & the Ozarks who love Kid Rock & Larry the Cable Guy are the ones in the Hindu Kush pruning for women in burkas & men in Duck Dynasty beards.
Sign up and head on over to Kabul then instead of making others do it for you.
"Complaining endlessly about critical race theory, despite the fact that they still haven't produced much evidence about how racism is actually taught in American classrooms."
.... how racism is actually taught to be recognized ....
Republicans have taken the nascent steps of privatizing elections and their national guards.
Think about it.
What is the haps in Montana with the CyberNinjas?
despite the fact that they still haven't produced much evidence about how racism is actually taught in American classrooms
Not true! Numerous "concerned parents", who coincidentally happen to be long-time Republican activists, have gone on Fox to describe the horrific ordeals their children have undergone at school in the cause of persuading them that white kids should spend their lives atoning for the enormous load of guilt they carry.
The idea that La Teoria Racial Critical will be the new decade's version of Pantallas de la Muerte intimidates me, but then I remembered that actual Democrat federal policy (PPACA) possessed a kernel of death panel truth within it that the GQP could easily twist into the Obummer regime & their Congressional handmaids were serial murderers. TRC? Not so much. There is no actual policy the GQP can point to that even a nimrod like Puddingring Chuck Todd will let the GQP panel on Press the Meat cling to. It's all a fugazi, debuted 18 months before the election. It will be old slang by the time of the midterms
The GQP in 2021-22? Not on fleek.
As per usual - stealing taxpayers money .
A few days ago you were saying it’s Democrats that have started the culture wars. And now you have a laundry list of items that any one of which is worth waging war over. Almost sounds like you blame the Dems for waging war, but also favor some kind of war occurring between the parties?