spaghettiwestern

These idiots are not only harming themselves and their children, they're harming and sometimes killing others who are medically prevented from receiving vaccinations. These scumbags are literally spreading disease.

Likewise Trader Joe's prices have shot up tremendously, like 50% on many items in less than a year. This while Aldi's prices have not risen nearly as much. Meanwhile corporations are celebrating the highest profits in more than 70 years while simultaneously working overtime to convince us those runaway profits have nothing to do with inflation.

So we're supposed to believe that the highest corporate profits in more than 70 years are not a primary driver of inflation? I don't buy it and neither do all economists.

It is unlikely that either the extent of corporate greed or even the power of corporations generally has increased during the past two years. Instead, the already-excessive power of corporations has been channeled into raising prices rather than the more traditional form it has taken in recent decades: suppressing wages.

Corporations have such excessive power that they can even push the narrative that their historic profits don't have anything to do with inflation. Some people actually believe the propaganda.

It's obvious that my point is Brookings is deliberately ignoring the elephant in in the room. They are turning a blind eye to extreme corporate price gouging and record profits, in fact Brookings didn't mention those things at all.

Thinking and critical analysis requires awareness of what is deliberately being omitted by a media source as well as what is being said. It has nothing to do with "somehow reading" the article wrong.

Right. The highest corporate profits in more than 70 years have nothing to do with it.

I’m worried it would cause permanent tension between two friends.

Significant tension with our Mexican neighbors is exactly what Trump, Desantis and other weirdo's rhetoric is causing. They're just trying gin up more hatred from their bizarre, poorly educated, toxic supporters and they don't get a fuck about anyone else.

Each time some GOP idiot talks about invading or bombing Mexico the news spreads like wildfire in Mexico while American news media ignores it almost completely. I repeatedly hear about bullshit the GOP freaks are spouting from my Mexican friends instead of reading about it in our own mainstream media.

How sad is it that I learned about Trump's plan to bomb Mexico not from American news media, but from alarmed Mexican friends.

Manchin has as much chance of becoming the Democratic nominee as Pence did at being the GQP candidate.

Biden definitely learned something from watching the Republicans screw Obama again and again.

Makes not the least bit of difference: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/20/the-microsoftcrowdstrike-outage-shows-the-danger-of-monopolization

Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the Microsoft BSODs that resulted from this fuck up. Millions of people have had their lives disrupted. The vast majority of those will blame Microsoft. Executive boards and IT groups may know better but it won't matter all that much - they will be aggressively looking to reduce their exposure to Microsoft's near monopoly anyway.

We now live in an overt oligarchy heading toward fascism. Although it's always been an oligarchy behind the scenes IMO, you are right, they are now saying the quiet part out loud. They are also taking actions that were once done behind closed doors right out into the open.

David Frum: "If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

We are watching that happen. An oligarchy run by a fascist would be just fine with conservatives as they're showing us every single day.

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition… There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Laws clearly do not bind Trump, Thomas, Roberts, Alito or Musk and they're done pretending that they do. They don't even bother playing lip service to the idea that we have a government of laws, not of men.

I once had a Mexican friend tell me "I weep for my country" when talking about Mexican crime. Watching the Republican's accelerating mockery of our laws, institutions and government I'm sorry to say that as an American I weep for mine.