STILL WAITING…..😂 😂 😂 one of these days your balls will drop and you’ll finally be man enough to admit when you’re 100% proven wrong…not yet though. Keep trying kiddo.

Exactly…thanks to the MAGA house members blocking billions needed to get control of the border, billions those same MAGA house members insisted on to send aid to Ukraine and now say isn’t important to appease their master. Americans see that clearly, the border issue now belongs to Trump until Dems retake the house.

True…fools like Trump and his cultists.
Republicans blocked immigration/border reform, billions to secure the border and reform immigration…exactly what they demanded 4 months ago…you fool.

You have no idea what you’re talking about, as usual. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Crimea was part of Ukraine. Biden had nothing to do with it, Trump encouraged them to go farther by recognizing Crimea as Russia to appease his benefactor, Putin…and historically Bush sr made the trilateral agreement essentially guaranteeing to protect Ukraine’s borders with US military power in exchange for nuclear deploliferation in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 92. Should we ignore the international treaty and destroy our reputation, making it impossible to make any international agreements at all? You likely think so as an honorless liar.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-states-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/

I know you don’t know the history, but that’s no excuse for making up nonsense.

Putin’s continuing expansionist policy has forced the hand of NATO to admit multiple countries that before the invasions weren’t even being considered, and make plans for admitting Ukraine, not the other way around you fool.
The waste is to throw away a victory for democracy and against a likely return to communist socialism just to hand Biden a loss…as if it were his war.

Now a 100% far right wing channel, CNN’s ratings have tanked below Newsmax.
Good job Licht.
I hope shareholders sue Licht for billions, just like they are at Fox that also compromised their journalistic integrity to appease the rapidly shrinking MAGA crowd.

For once, Bob is right….CNN is losing viewers, now that it’s becoming another righty propaganda outlet under the new CEO Chris Licht to appease John Malone, a far right-leaning billionaire now on the board of Discovery who just purchased CNN, close friend of the Murdoch family, and key Warner Bros. Discovery board member who has made it well-known that he would like CNN to be more “centrist”—whatever that means, has taken a noticeable shift to the far right in recent months. Firing the most highly rated hosts, cancelling highly rated shows, simply because he didn’t like them personally and hated the fact checking of the right.
It’s reported that they only watch CNN through FOX news….so only the edited clips Fox shows with Fox commentary and editorializing.

Note, when Stelter was fired, Tucker Carlson and Daily Mail seemed to know about it a full day before even Stelter was told….because Malone couldn’t keep from bragging about it in celebration.

CNN is under attack from within by the destructive dishonest right, who is trying their utmost to kill it. Who in their right mind could believe they might attract righty viewers at the outlet they call “the Devil” “evil” “communist”..etc? No one. The changes were blatantly obviously intended to ruin and kill the network the right hates with a passion, not improve it.

@newtboy,

Those have been attacked by extremely tiny, but vocal minorities on the very far left, not main stream leftists nor centrists. Just as all on the right aren’t raving lunatic Trumpists that gladly put orange daddy before reality, country, and democracy, all on the left aren’t as you’ve described them….very few are.

Wow, something we can agree on?

I do hope the aforementioned far/nutty left/right folks are the minority we think. Events like Jan. 6, or censorship, firings to appease fringes show the nutters on both ends holding more power already then I’m comfortable with.

I could quote legal scholars who think otherwise, but since it is kind of split down the middle, you would be able to find just as many that argue that it is constitutional. My opinion goes towards the non-constitutional side. He isn't a sitting President any longer and the only reason Democrats are doing this is because, as you mentioned, it is a much higher bar to convince a jury that using the word 'Fight' means a call to insurrection. If they could manage to force it through the easier method, then they can simply call for a majority vote and block him from running again in 2024.

That is the net goal of the Democrats, because they fear he will win once people realize how badly the new ecological policies and debt from a further stimulus is going to hurt our economy. Let's be realistic in that it took Trump fucking up multiple times, the worst pandemic in 100 years, and the entire Democratic voting bloc turning out for Biden to win by a few thousand in the critical states that gave him the electoral mandate. I can't vote for him again, but there are plenty who would. Mostly poor and middle class working people who are going to be realizing just how bad Biden is going to fuck up the economy in the short term over his appeasement of portions of the green new deal.

We've discussed the gun situation to death. I could post quotes from Kamala and Biden, as well as his stated plan for gun control he put up on his site, but it would again serve no purpose. You feel that nothing will happen or it will only be limited to scary 'assault rifles'. I feel otherwise. We can bang our heads against the metaphorical wall over and over, but in the end neither of us is going to change the other's mind on gun control.

Sadly, in my case, that still means that unless Democrats do a 180 on gun control and illegal immigration I will continue to be forced to vote for Republicans. Also, yes, I mean the trial, but can we not split hairs? It's like asking for a Kleenex and getting nagged that you really meant Puffs.

If so many people think God wrote a book IMHO it becomes relevant to study it at least superficially just so you can co-exist and communicate with all these people.

The stories in the book are mostly not history but the book itself and how it came to be certainly is.

Seriously if God is omnipotent and knows everything this book of his shows a strong sense of humor rather than much intelligent design. Like having bits and pieces garbled by running them back and forward through ancient humanoid versions of modern day OCR, machine translation and political censorship.

I love the Septuaginta bit (not in this video) where mythically 70ish scholars were secluded for 70ish days and each came up with his own Greek translation and they were all mythically identical. Where in reality the translation took decades, was a team effort that garbled the texts to appease current rulers and added whole new books.

There's no interview at the end. @newt will not be appeased.

I have two boys, 9 and 14. If they treated people the way Trump, and most of the right, treats people, I'd be ashamed and reprimand them, especially if they did it publicly the way Trump has mocked a disabled reporter, Ford, the parents of fallen soldier... we could go on and on about how he mocks people on a regular basis. Every major religion has some variation of the Golden Rule, treat others as you'd have others treat you, especially Christianity, and yet the entire right ignores this rule, especially when it's somebody they oppose. Be it LGBTQIA+ people, political opponents, economic opponents, they ignore the Golden Rule. They in fact view it as a sign of strength to openly be hostile and rude to others, and yet, when one of theirs is mocked by late night TV, or when Sarah Sanders is kicked out of a restaurant (days after the fact that the entire right was celebrating the Supreme Court victory that they don't have to serve people they don't like), suddenly it is all "why can't people be civilized"? Plank in your own eye ass holes.

As Bob says politics is mean and ugly, but Republicans, Christians, made it that way and have been doubling down on it, ignoring the commandments to Love on another, the commandment to treat others as you'd have them treat you, not to judge least ye be judged and on and on. And somehow the right views that as a strength, as a good thing. They view McCain's efforts to reach across the isle and find a common center ground that everyone can agree on as a weakness. They don't want or will accept a 50/50 solution, they want a solution that is 80 or even better 90 percent on their side, and anything less than that is the other side being obstructionist.

Anyhow, if my kids acted the way Trump does, our President, whom we should hold to the highest standards, I'd make them apologize and be frank with them that I was appalled at their behavior, to mock a person with a disability or a woman or any other person the way Trump does on a regular basis. Yet the entire right is falling over themselves with pleasure at this rude behavior... I just don't get it. I don't get how that is acceptable behavior now from the President of the United States. It'd be one thing if he was still the piece of shit business man (who's business' constantly fail and need bankruptcy protection, even though he rarely pays contractors), 2nd rate reality TV show star, but this is the highest office in the land, where we should expect a person to act with dignity. I may have found Bush Jr to be an idiot and a horrible President, but at least he treated people with respect and the way one would expect of a President. Now we have a man-child and somehow this is a great thing. Fuck our lives when this is acceptable, when this is in fact praise worthy by far too many on the right (and I know, many Republicans said it was wrong of Trump to mock her the way he did, but they didn't really stand up to him, just a quick line to appease the few who might vote for them that would be appalled at that behavior).

EDIT TO ADD: What's upsetting about the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination is that they didn't even hold hearings. They had the votes to block him from confirmation, so hold hearings, say "no" and move on, but they wouldn't even do that. And he'd probably have been one of the most moderate justices in the modern era, which would have made explaining the "no" harder perhaps, but at least it would have been fair. But apparently fair is for the weak, one must play the ugly game now... and look at Bob's one reply, they got their eye on Ginsburg, they are hoping she dies so they can replace her with another theocrat like Kavanaugh, and because of that expectation and hope, you can guarantee that all the right will be out in force come November. We really need a miracle turnout to start to change things...

There's a big difference between peace and appeasement, Trump is offering the latter, we already had the former.
Russia is expanding both it's borders and influence in Europe. Their actions merit some hysteria. Using nerve agents on foreign soil is an act of war against our allies and humanity, as were the invasions of Crimea and the Ukraine. Is Alaska the next lost satellite Putin has his eye on? Who's going to come to our aid if so?

@HenningKO --

Not that I want to defend them (the R's that publicly defend or at least refrain from going negative on Trump), but I think the end of the video pretty well explains their thought process.

They want to stay in office. If they oppose Trump *now*, they create a big problem for themselves in their primaries. Who likes Trump? Evangelicals. Who shows up and actually votes in primaries? Evangelicals. Many of these guys are in states so overwhelmingly red that as long as they are on the ballot in the general election, they are almost assured the victory. But go against Trump now, and it won't be their name next to that (R), it'll be some Evangelical appeaser that booted them out in the primary.

Is that a rather spineless and amoral line of reasoning? Yes. Is it notably lacking in the public service motivation that we would like our elected officials to have, and instead motivated entirely out of shamelessly corrupt self-promotion? Yes.

Is that sort of reasoning and motivation unique to Republicans? Hell no. You can't spell incumbent without getting "bent". I think we need term limits on all these fuckers.

welcome to the epic battle of the narcissists!

where women...children and young men indoctrinated into the religion of nationalism, die in horrible and grotesque manners all to appease the bloated ego's of two sociopaths!!!!

coming to Netflix this fall!
don;t miss it!

ECB Research Bulletin:

In an economy with its own fiat currency, the monetary authority and the fiscal authority can ensure that public debt denominated in the national fiat currency is non-defaultable, i.e. maturing government bonds are convertible into currency at par. With this arrangement in place, fiscal policy can focus on business cycle stabilisation when monetary policy hits the lower bound constraint. However, the fiscal authorities of the euro area countries have given up the ability to issue non-defaultable debt. As a consequence, effective macroeconomic stabilisation has been difficult to achieve.

Translation:
- all members of the eurozone effectively use a foreign currency
- they can default, because they do not and cannot issue debt in their currency
- fiscal policy has thus been completely neutered

Ergo, national parliaments have a significantly smaller policy space compared to countries with their own currency. Our parliaments intentionally surrender power to unelected technocrats, even control of the national budget, which is the primary power available to any parliament anywhere.

"Sorry, lad. We cannot pay for healthcare/pension/infrastructure/education/wages/X, we have to maintain a balanced budget to appease the market." Yet it is still illegal to call for the guillotine...

Meanwhile, Japan doesn't give a fuck. The BoJ has been vacuuming up outstanding debt like there's no tomorrow. It currently holds in excess of 40% of all government debt, effectively canceling it. It's just book-keeping. The Treasury issues the debt, the CB buys the debt. Both are part of the consolidated government sector, ergo no debt. "Hyperinflation!", they scream. Can you hear them? Except Japan has been fighting deflation for two decades, with no end in sight.

Yet the inflation-hawks are still treated as persons of authority. Flat-earthers, the lot of 'em.

And my country wants the rest of Europe to sign on to the most moronic law in German history: the "Schuldenbremse", which makes running a deficit illegal at the constitutional level (except for undefined "emergencies"). They are either a) brainwashed, b) idiots, or c) straight up evil. And I'm not sure which one I prefer.

@newtboy
gonna have to disagree with ya there mate.

not so much on the speculation in regards to trump involvement,or some kind of capitulation with russia.there quite possibly be some co-ordination between the kremlin and the trump administration.trumps alleged ties with putin may all be true,but until i see some actual evidence,that is all it will ever be;speculation.

and i think chomsky's criticism is a valid one.
the "russia russia russia" drum beating is reminiscent of the republicans and their meth-induced media barrage of "benghazi benghazi benghazi",and even after their precious political whipping tool had been debunked,they STILL beat that drum.

and of course it is hypocritical of the US government to cry about political election interference! america has been interfering with other,sovereign countries democratic elections for decades!

because here in murica' we like our allies to be either be run by despotic leaders,or rigid theocracies,because democracies are hard to manipulate and control.can't be bribing an entire citizenry now can we? we like our foreign allies like we like our meat,juicy and tender and easy pickings.

now i am not here to defend putin.the man is a brutal authoritarian,who may appear to some as a russian patriot,but i just see a ruthless and saavy political player who appeases the only constituency that matters to him.the russian oligarchs,and they OWN that fucking joint.

but it was NATO who began to encroach on russian borders,not the other way around.in fact,as early as the 80's we began that encroachment.we lied to gorbachev,who was removed as president in shame,to be replaced by yeltsin.who was america's pick for their own little tool of the kremlin.

russia's military build-up has been a direct response to our ever-increasing wars of aggression in the middle east.putin has stated so publicly.

russia's biggest export is oil and natural gas,and russia pretty much is the sole provider for all of europe.with our wars in the middle east,and now qatar aggressively seeking to push through their own oil and gas pipeline to sell to europe.(what?you thought yemen and syria were about civil wars and terrorists?).

what did you THINK russia was going to do?
sit back and let their only major export be challenged?

and now that trump,like the buffoon he is,publicly stated that if the baltic states are not willing to pay their fair share towards NATO,then they will be removed.opening the door for putin.

poor latvia...

but lets waste all this time on "russia russia russia",while ignoring the larger implications of a fucking world war.

did russia manipulate US elections?
possibly..probably..
was the trump administration complicit?
possibly..probably..

is their any evidence beside speculation,and coincidence?
nope.

chomsky makes a valid point.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html