The best. #1 in so many ways....like gun crime and incarceration. That's the goal, right? Arm every man, woman, and child? Because gun lobbyists are...

nevermind. arguments don't work on these people. If it did, they'd have learned their lesson by now. 

"America is the safest and most prosperous country in the world"..... if your rich and powerful

I do think the "why are mass shootings an overwhelmingly American problem?" angle and process of elimination is one of the best ways to cut through the BS on the gun issue. You can see its effect in that clip where Ted can't even bring himself to answer the question.

Ted Cruz is one of the most contemptible individuals in American government. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about him. The man even showed himself to be a complete cuckold when he refused to defend his family against Trump, and again when he blamed his kids for running away to Cancun during the Texas blackout. 

Pfff, Krystal, It's not Putin. Who cares? 

If the next election is actually going to be stolen, this is how they're going to do it:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/01/gop-contest-elections-tapes-00035758

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/republican-election-plan-polling-places-activists-1361282/

The hypocrisy of them accusing their opponents of voter fraud when it’s what they aim to do, and have often been the ones being caught for it.

Still absorbing info from the Jan 6th investigation, but on a lighter(?) note the Michigan governor Republican primary has been a train wreck of epic proportions. First five of their candidates are taken off the ballot for mass signature fraud, now their next top candidate has been arrested by the FBI for involvement in the insurrection:

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/05/1103144991/5-republicans-are-off-the-michigan-gubernatorial-ballot-after-signature-fraud
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103925150/michigan-candidate-for-governor-ryan-kelley-arrested-by-fbi-for-jan-6-involvemen

Their corruption is matched only by their incompetence. The hilarity matched only by how deeply concerning it is for our democracy.

We just posted an 8.6% annualized inflation rate last month, which is the worst since 1981. The bulk thereof is concentrated in essentials, like food, shelter, gasoline, and transportation. (To which end, I consider it almost humorously pathetic that the administration conveniently prefers the metric of inflation that excludes most of these essentials for policy formation purposes.) Gasoline has seen the biggest spike on a percentage basis out of all those costs: up 49.5% over the last year and roughly double since Biden took office, so that would be the main expense to get back under control. I mean I just paid a full $5 per gallon to fill up on Thursday, which is the most I've ever paid by a good margin. What gets to me more than anything about this whole situation though is the fact that the White House claims they're basically out of ideas for what to do about it.

...I mean personally I can think of tons of solutions. I don't know why our politicians think of none of them. And none of them involve more drilling, incidentally, which is a STUPID idea that would take many months and years to even get going anyway. That's all the Republicans are throwing out there for ideas. It's more than the Biden Administration though. They're just exhausting our emergency reserves and it's not working! Look, if supply was truly the problem here, then Exxon and other oil giants wouldn't be raking in unfathomable profits right now and using them to buy back their own stocks to boost the price thereof instead of spending it on increased oil exploration and production. They don't need pressure from the environmentalists to minimize the fuel supply; they can do that all by themselves 'cause it's quite profitable and they can use the political situation as cover!

Anyway, as for solutions, let's try out these ideas:

1) Transportation Secretary Buttigieg says that the "price of gasoline is not set by a dial in the Oval Office". This begs the question of WHY THE HELL IT ISN'T right about now!!! I mean seriously, how about we just do what we used to do in these kinds of situations and impose a price ceiling that companies aren't allowed to exceed? Because that will increase demand and lead to fuel shortages, you say? If so then boy have you been drinking the Kool-Aid! France has used fuel price ceilings of late and they seem to work just fine there! Save only for Malta, they have the lowest inflation rate of all of EU countries as a direct result. I mean it's over 5% now, so still high, but substantially below what ours has been. Price ceilings work in our context because the actual main problem is companies profiting off the current situation, not something else. Sorry suckers who've bought into some other corporate-sponsored narrative.

2) How about we just ban oil exports for a while instead of artificially reducing our existing supply?

3) Or perhaps, in a more salient solution, we adopt the Alaska universal basic income model nationally and give the population regular oil sale dividends? That way the population would benefit from the rising cost of fuel instead of suffering from it!

4) Or, perhaps the most obvious yet politically toxic solution, we could just nationalize ownership of our natural resources, like the energy sector. That way we could subsidize the price of fuel like many other countries do!

5) Or we could just reverse the oil sanctions on Russia. That would solve a lot of this problem right there. I mean let's get real: it's clear at this point that we're doing waaaaay more harm to ourselves than to the Putin oligarchy with those. The regime's actually making more money off of fuel sales than they were before the war (excuse me, "special operation") because they can now charge higher prices for their exports. And if Europe stops buying too, that just means they have to get more oil from us instead, which means less oil coming in from Russia and more going out to Europe, which all adds up to way less for us here at home, which adds up to as much as $6.20 a gallon by August. Another obvious solution few people are willing to give voice to.

Well anyway, none of it's going to happen so what does it matter? My point is there are solutions out the wazoo here, people, there's just nobody in Washington with the guts to pursue them, and THAT's what frustrates me more than anything about this whole fucking situation!

Biden’s Visit To Saudi Arabia Exposes The Ukraine Narrative For The Sham It Is

In a major walkback from his campaign pledge to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for human rights abuses like the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, President Biden will reportedly visit Riyadh with the goal of persuading Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to help the US alliance win its economic war against Russia.

The Guardian tells us the trip “suggests Biden has prioritized his need to bring oil prices down and thereby punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, over his stand on human rights.”

So in order to punish Vladimir Putin for his war crimes and his assault on freedom and democracy, Biden will be courting a tyrannical war criminal whose country has no freedom or democracy.

Washington will be ending its brief diplomatic dry spell with a government that has been waging a horrific war against Yemen while suppressing any semblance of human rights at home in order to more effectively punish Putin for waging a horrific war against Ukraine which we’re told threatens freedom and democracy throughout the western world.

A lot of people talk about the “hypocrisy” of the US empire, as though being hypocritical is the issue. But the complete lack of moral consistency in US imperial behavior is noteworthy not merely because of hypocrisy: it’s noteworthy because it shows the US empire has no morality.

Despite the astonishing deluge of propaganda and brazen government disinformation we’re being blasted in the face with painting the war in Ukraine as a fight between good versus evil, freedom versus tyranny, democracy versus autocracy, the truth is much less flattering to the imperial ego. In reality, the US is waging a proxy war in Ukraine for the exact same reason it remains close with Saudi Arabia: because it advances its own interests to do so.

That’s it. That’s the whole entire story. The US doesn’t care about Ukrainian freedom or Ukrainian lives, it cares about strengthening its Eurasian geostrategic hegemony, and it would cheerfully incinerate every Ukrainian alive in order to accomplish that goal.

In truth, when you look at its overall behavior on the world stage, the US is far more murderous and tyrannical than either Russia or Saudi Arabia . Pretending that Biden is lowering the United States beneath its values by visiting Saudi Arabia is highly flattering to the US. If anything, it’s the other way around.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/06/03/bidens-visit-to-saudi-arabia-exposes-the-ukraine-narrative-for-the-sham-it-is/

I don't agree with everything in this article, but it's great to put things in perspective every once in a while.

More embarrassingly, it looks like China is single-handedly humiliating the west by keeping Russia alive;

I remember arguing with many idiots here that China should be stopped and manufacturing should definitely be brought back and it is a hill worth dying on, it is a matter of national security, but nope, how dare I say anything that paints the dumb orange man in a positive light. "Let's wait for automation to completely take over before we bring the factories", as if these robots and the tech behind them will not need factories, the infrastructure or the IPs to make them in the first place. 

A con artist he is, but letting China be the manufacturer of the world is among the stupidest things the USA let happen, all for short-term greed so the oligarchs can get richer. I have always known the west is a lot weaker than we believe, but even then, I am astonished how easily Ukraine is being dismantled in front of our very eyes and how China's support for Russia is unhinged and we can do nothing about it.