Republican doubletalk on the economy was kicked up a notch today:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proclaimed Monday that Republicans would not allow the government to default on its debts, even as he labored to sell Wall Street on a risky fiscal showdown with the White House that could unleash vast economic turmoil.
Speaking at the New York Stock Exchange, McCarthy (R-Calif.) affirmed his party’s plan to seize on a rapidly approaching deadline — an urgent need to raise the debt ceiling, which sets how much Washington can borrow to pay its bills — to extract spending cuts and other policy concessions from President Biden.
Fucking Republicans. I wouldn't normally use such language, but my cancer treatment is just a few days away now. When I eventually get back I can pretend that I was mad with anxiety and hardly knew what I was saying.
In the meantime, fucking Republicans. McCarthy is doing this because it's one of the promises he had to make to the fuckwit wing of the party before they'd support his nomination to the speakership:
But McCarthy’s speech belied the risks in the GOP’s political gambit, which threatens to sink the stock market, thrust millions of Americans from their jobs and jolt the global financial system. The stakes seemed only more glaring given McCarthy’s choice to deliver his remarks in the beating heart of Wall Street.
For the moment, Wall Street doesn't care because investors assume that it's all just talk and McCarthy will eventually back down. And I suppose that's likely. But before it happens, Republicans may be responsible for tipping a fragile economy into recession.
Not that they care. After all, immiserating millions of people will be good for their electoral chances in 2024. Eyes on the prize, people.
Ah, but it seems you're forgetting it takes two to crash the economy: one to threaten to do so if their policy demands aren't met, and the other to reject those threats. So who can say who is at fault here?
Takes two to commit murder.
They'll never understand, will they?
"I make a very reluctant victim"
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And then Kevin won’t be able to blame the “fucking Fed.” No wonder he’s upset.
However dumb and misplaced Drum's blame the Fed and long-running inflation denialism / minimisation has been, in this particular instance he will be very right.
Such games around sovereign debt reliability are the height of irresponsability and very dangerous. Actually going to pull the trigger on doing the threat is how major countries slide into instable 2nd rate status as once the norm is broken, it tends to stay broken.
The real danger from Authoritarians is that they are perfectly happy to kill everyone (else) on the planet to get what they want.
Link to the free book, The Authoritarians.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view?resourcekey=0-WGxUhtR8lhJdnFck4tTIyA
Quick read: pages 30 through 34.
Republicans may be responsible for tipping a fragile economy into recession. Not that they care.
They care. It's a bonus, so long as they believe they can pin it on biden.
Even the GOP care about the economy since their Masters, the corporate interests, chamber of commerce types, and hyper wealthy people who fund them will care if they loose money. Of course the congressional Democrats and Biden have a similar group of Masters.
McCarthy will have to get a spending cut/debt limit proposal passed in order to have any significant leverage. Remains to be seen if he can get his group of bat shit crazy MAGA crackpots in line, when he can only afford to loose about 4 of them.
You Have to Think of Trump’s Election as Year Zero,
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/think-of-trumps-election-as-year-zero
Dire as this sounds it leaves a lot of people who would always have voted for Republicans who could be persuaded to vote against these people, if Democrats present themselves in a friendly manner. For a lot of the people who would vote for Republicans it is all about presentation.
These are people who fundamentally don't want government to function in a way that gets any of their attention --they don't care about issues, they care about manner. That's why they're susceptible to Republicans who don't care about issues either and only sell an aesthetic. And, of course, what you get with that is crime with a mask, and Trump removed the mask.
Which is why I've been trying to say for years you have to run against Republicans, they're the issue.
Who they are is the only issue.
These are some good points. I associate with a number of (elderly) folks who still think it's Ike's Republican Party. Conversely, they think Democrats are all clones of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who they hate as much as Jane Fonda (yeah, look it up...)
I think part of the reason is that television news has become fairly worthless, nobody reads newspapers (and there aren't many left), and folks just get their opinions and view of reality from social medfia, which for the elderly, is Facebook. Also Fox, of course.
They really don't know what's going on, and being old, don't much care about the future.
I realize this doesn't explain the defection of rural voters to the Party of Plutocrats and their worship of the Big City Con Man. Clearly, I don't know everything.
It's simply that rural voters are far away from where anything is going on, so wherever anything is going on and whatever is going on there is meaningless to them, which they resent having to think about because it makes them feel like they're idiots in the middle of nowhere doing nothing, so they vote for the party that validates that and motivates resentment.
I see a relative position here. Rural voters seem to have little in the first place, and what they have, they saved up for, scrimped and saved, and then bought the the new fire engine. When proclamations come from the White Towers of DC, what could be done to them? And so they barely survive, eking out existence.
Left alone they fester in the stagnant agar. It's like the program that Dawkins designed for demonstrating evolution, left alone without input it stagnates. But throw a drag queen in, or some CRT, or do you remember Satanic Panic? and you'll get some interesting results. Probably not survivable (witness dying towns nationwide) it's just our system tries to hold the line. To all of our suffering.
"Rural voters seem to have little in the first place, and what they have, they saved up for, scrimped and saved, and then bought the the new fire engine."
So-called rural voters live in modern America. They are not the yeoman farmers of old. Most of them are probably glorified exurbanites.
"Left alone they fester in the stagnant agar. It's like the program that Dawkins designed for demonstrating evolution, left alone without input it stagnates. But throw a drag queen in, or some CRT, or do you remember Satanic Panic? and you'll get some interesting results."
People with real problems don't get in a tizzy about drag queens or half-understood school curricula in far-off states. The people who scream the most about that sort of stuff are comfortable people with nothing better to worry about.
That's why the vandals on January 6 were by and large middle class, middle-aged white folks: they're doing fine, but yammering about fraud and getting all worked up about conspiracies with a group of fellow travelers is fulfilling and fun.
This is a fantastic thread on rural poverty,
https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/12pnnqw/man_makes_an_ultrasonic_dog_repellant_for_his/
"I associate with a number of (elderly) folks who still think it's Ike's Republican Party."
The elderly voters are probably the craziest ones out there because they have nothing to do all day but watch NewMax and Fox.
"Of course the congressional Democrats and Biden have a similar group of Masters."
Way to keep up your "both sides" street cred. The two parties are very very similar. Sure thing.
Can't we hold two thoughts in our heads at one time? Absolutely, the parties are very different, and the modern GOP writ large is probably the single most dangerous organization in human history given the stakes of our geo-political moment and the coming global environmental reckoning.
But please, don't deny the obvious corporate capture of the mainstream Democratic party.
I see your inner Jeff Tiedrich is peaking out.
Biden and Democrats should propose to cut federal spending *only* in Republican states, by 50%.
Just leave it there.
Just eliminate all those "oppressive" Federal military facilities. In Red States.
In the name of "freedumb."
Democrats need to come up with messaging *right now* that makes clear who will be to blame for the economic fallout of a government default -- some phrase like "the McCarthy recession" or "the Republican's depression". Talk about it now to get the expression into common discussion, just as they did with "the Big Lie". Ideally, the prospective bad press will scare sufficiently many Republicans into a moment of sanity. If not, it will provide rhetorical cover for whatever emergency solution the Biden administration has to pursue -- simply ignoring the limit, minting the trillion-dollar coin, whatever.
Vulgar Kevin is Best Kevin.
If you enjoy the wonderfully intemperate I'd recommend Keith Olbermann's podcast,
https://omny.fm/shows/countdown-with-keith-olbermann
Back in the Obama era, I didn't really fret about the Tea Party crashing the full faith and credit of the US, because I assumed their madness was purely performative for the primary voters, and they (the pols) would always knuckle under to the demands of their donors (who want a stable economy). In the age of Trump, I assume all Republican politicians are at least as crazy as they look on the news, and I seriously doubt the power of the moneymen to control them.
+1
I miss the days when the craziest person in politics was Sarah Palin.
Which is profoundly sad.
"... demands of their donors .."
Why are these referred to as "donors"?
They pay and get service, which means they are "clients", no?
Thought the fed had guaranteed it already.
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