lmao... Vlad puts nukes in Belarus, but it's NATO's Fault(tm) for even considering a similar response.

Some people can't see past their cowardly, short-sighted, self-abusive Chamberlain Tendencies.

Yeah, but see there's trans people out there! And Dems will take all your guns away some day, and women will continue to have abortions, for the most part in a rational, timely manner.

Which are all a hell of a lot more important problems than losing our Constitutional democracy to Oligarchs, Authoritarians, and Corporations! (but I repeat myself)

"50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says

Tax cuts for the wealthy have long drawn support from conservative lawmakers and economists who argue that such measures will "trickle down" and eventually boost jobs and incomes for everyone else. But a new study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group " the rich.

"Based on our research, we would argue that the economic rationale for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak," Julian Limberg, a co-author of the study and a lecturer in public policy at King's College London, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch.

"In fact, if we look back into history, the period with the highest taxes on the rich " the postwar period " was also a period with high economic growth and low unemployment."

- dominion over everything market related

Laughable claptrap.

The very wealthy own the regulators, the products, and the means of production.

Their only problem is becoming the same as Russia's Oligarchy has now; their KGB Agent now owns them.

When democratic government fails, the authoritarians take over, and even the very wealthy are no longer safe.

As stated, Neoliberalism is eating itself by destroying democracy.

JeffyBelle, Trans Inspector.

Call 1-800-Ballseeker for Your Free Inspection!

#20

Another Episode of, "Real Housewives of Georgia".

"If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing also on our territory to strengthen the security of NATO's eastern flank, we are ready for it," Polish President Andrzej Duda told Polish outlet Fakt in an interview published on Monday.

More than two years of war in Ukraine has spurred NATO countries in eastern Europe"close to Russian territory"to invest heavily in their military strength, although they do not possess nuclear weapons. In the alliance, the U.S., the United Kingdom and France have nuclear weapons, but several European bases host U.S. tactical nuclear weapons.

Russia, which has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, said in June 2023 that it had started transferring tactical nuclear weapons to one of its key allies, Belarus. Russia used Belarus as a springboard for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Belarus borders NATO countries Poland and Latvia.

Poland and NATO member Lithuania also border the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, home to a significant Russian military presence and Moscow's Black Sea Fleet. The Kremlin is "increasingly militarizing" Kaliningrad, Duda said."

"Neoliberal theorists and their beneficiaries may be happy to live with all this. They are doing very well by it.

They forget that, for all the rhetoric, free markets can't function without strong democracies beneath them " the kind of democracies that neoliberalism puts under threat. In a very direct way, neoliberal capitalism is devouring itself.

Not only are neoliberal economies inefficient at dealing with collective issues, but neoliberalism as an economic system is not sustainable on its own.

To take one fundamental element: A market economy runs on trust. Adam Smith himself emphasized the importance of trust, recognizing that society couldn't survive if people brazenly followed their own self-interest rather than good codes of conduct:

"The regard to those general rules of conduct, is what is properly called a sense of duty, a principle of the greatest consequence in human life, and the only principle by which the bulk of mankind are capable of directing their actions ... Upon the tolerable observance of these duties, depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct."

For instance, contracts have to be honored. The cost of enforcing every single contract through the courts would be unbearable. And with no trust in the future, why would anybody save or invest?"

Neoliberalism is eating itself by destroying democracy... which it thinks to replace with a Russianesque Oligarchy.

Ukraine Reveals Timeframe For F-16s' Arrival To The Front
By Daniel Orton

The Danish ambassador to Ukraine has said Kyiv will receive F-16 fighter jets from Denmark this summer, as promised.

"Don't worry; there will definitely be airplanes for Ukraine," Ambassador Ole Egberg Mikkelsen said in an interview with Ukrainian news outlet Mi-Ukraina on Sunday.

Denmark's government plans to donate 19 F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine, the Danish Defense Ministry told Newsweek in January.

Denmark's F-16s will add to a growing fleet of fighter jets already promised to Ukraine by its key allies, with Kyiv hoping to deploy them to the frontlines as early as this year.

"F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman were the most notable 20th-century defenders of unrestrained capitalism. The idea of "unfettered markets""markets without rules and regulations"is an oxymoron because without rules and regulations enforced by government, there could and would be little trade.

Cheating would be rampant, trust low. A world without restraints would be a jungle in which only power mattered, determining who got what and who did what. It wouldn't be a market at all."

.

"My own conclusions have been radically different. It was because of democratic demands that democratic governments, such as that of the U.S., responded to the Great Depression through collective action.

The failure of governments to respond adequately to soaring unemployment in Germany led to the rise of Hitler.

Today, it is neoliberalism that has brought massive inequalities and provided fertile ground for dangerous populists.

Neoliberalism's grim record includes freeing financial markets to precipitate the largest financial crisis in three-quarters of a century, freeing international trade to accelerate deindustrialization, and freeing corporations to exploit consumers, workers, and the environment alike.

Contrary to what Friedman suggested in his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, this form of capitalism does not enhance freedom in our society.

Instead, it has led to the freedom of a few at the expense of the many. As Isaiah Berlin would have it: Freedom for the wolves; death for the sheep."

'

"The consequences of neoliberalism point to part of the reason: specifically, growing income and wealth disparities and the polarization caused by the media.

In theory, economic freedom was supposed to be the bedrock basis for political freedom and democratic health. The opposite has proved to be true.

The rich and the elites have a disproportionate voice in shaping both government policies and societal narratives. All of which leads to an enhanced sense by those who are not wealthy that the system is rigged and unfair, which makes healing divisions all the more difficult."

Excerpts... there's a lot more at the thread link, which I would encourage you to read, as just posting what you always post on the subject is, well, inadequate, and worse, increasingly boring

"It happened at a high school a few years ago."

Showing the Urgency of this Most Important of All National Trans Emergency!

Hey, the Confederacy is Back in style among rwingers.

How can you have Civil War Redux without the Confederacy?

Democrats are trying to Free the Corporate Wage Slaves in the South, and this must not stand!

"The allocation of military assistance by the United States to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan will aggravate the global crisis," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a post to messaging app Telegram.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chairman of Russia's security council, said the approval of new aid to Ukraine was "Russophobic" and would exacerbate "the number of victims of this war."

"I cannot with all sincerity not wish the United States to plunge into a new civil war as quickly as possible," Medvedev said on Telegram."

More Republican Family Values.

No wonder they are so popular.

This is what's known as a quick divorce in Winger World.

Carnival roadies are some of Trump's more elegant friends.

This guy is a slimeball extraordinaire.

Ah so, THEBS "thinks" that sexual assault is legal under this provision.

No wonder he posts such nonsense.

Equal Protection under the Law is the point. I'm not particularly fond of a lot of things a lot of people do, but as long as they aren't harming others, they have the Right to equal protection.

"The truth is that there are no universal, species-wide brain features that differ between the sexes. Rather, the brain is like other organs, such as the heart and kidneys, which are similar enough to be transplanted between women and men quite successfully." Mar 25, 2021

That's what China did in 1937 when Japan invaded them... gave up half their territory just to stop the war.

Oh, wait, no they did-int.

Dark Brandon's Fault(tm)

I'll take that.

Wonder if they are hanging the ineffective MGT in effigy?

Not fair, really. Moscow Marge tried her best.

The radical Freedumb Caucus is making the rest of the everyday rwingers look like morons who can't govern the House.

The appear to be tired of it.

"Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.

The hefty toll " which is far higher than previous estimates " is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality.

The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049, in comparison to a baseline without the impacts of climate breakdown.

In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this.

"It's devastating," said Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study.

"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking."

.

Fortunately, inequality isn't a concerning factor for rwingers, so they can just ignore that.

"Let's talk about 11% of your paycheck disappearing....

Beau of the Fifth Colum"

You might as well be talking to yourself, true... only an idiot would listen.

Vlad wants the Soviet Union back.... you ever seen the State Symbol of the SU?

letter from the Danbury Baptist group to Thomas Jefferson

* i need a new editor

#44

America Firsters will always prefer fighting a war on America's soil rather than stopping said war in Europe... just like they did in the last WW.