For those keeping track, under GOP/Trump "leadership":
—working/middle class wages are stagnant
—gas prices are going up
—healthcare prices are going up
—prices for a vast array of consumer products are going up due to (needless) trade wars
—the super-rich are getting richer
Any financial benefit a working or middle class family received from the #GOPTaxScam is more than countered by the increased prices for pretty much everything else (including, ironically, federal taxes collected at the ports due to Trump's tariffs).
When Trump boasts about the billions being collected from tariffs at the border... THOSE ARE TAXES BEING PAID BY CONSUMERS!
To add insult to injury, tariffs are also REGRESSIVE taxes; lower/middle class folks pay relatively more of their income in tariffs than the rich.
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It's become apparent that Republicans don't actually understand how power works.
They think what they're doing with Trump, Kavanaugh, etc., shows that they're powerful.
It doesn't. It just shows they know how to *abuse* the power of institutions that took decades to accumulate.
Power for any government is derived from the legitimacy the people have given it.
Congresspeople, Presidents, Supreme Court justices, etc, are caretakers for governmental institutions. The best ones increase the legitimacy of those institutions, giving them more power.
Bad caretakers waste the power of the institutions. They're burning through a finite supply of institutional power to get their way (which makes them SEEM more powerful), undermining the long-term viability of the institutions they've been entrusted with.
The reasoning being used by Kanye—likely with the support of right-wingers—that the 13th Amendment somehow legalized prison labor and so must be repealed is frankly horrifying.
I get it: there are too many laws and too many people—especially minorites—end up in prison for too long.
Repealing the 13th Amendment—or even excising the bit about being convicted of a crime—won't do anything about this problem.
There was prison labor before the 13th. That Amendment didn't create nor legalize it.
Kavanaugh, in the yearbook message HE WROTE, called himself an "alumnus" of a girl (along with other friends of his) and asked Mark Judge if he had "boofed"?
Unfamiliar with the term "boofed"? Per Urban Dictionary, it means having had anal sex.
He doesn't regret any of this.
This man is a disgusting AF frat boy who doesn't regret his history of drunken misogyny, cruelty and sexual assault.
Meanwhile, a Black woman who voted when she honestly didn't know she wasn't allowed to was sentenced to jail for five years.
This country is fucked.
Another gem in Kavanaugh's yearbook message: "FFFFFFF"
When recently confronted with the fact that what he wrote in his high school yearbook hurt the feelings of a friend of his, Kavanaugh refused to apologize. Instead, he essentially blamed her for feeling the way she did.
That's all you need to know about this man.
This friend had ALSO signed the letter bearing witness to his "good character". This is how he repaid her.
I wonder if Bill Shine, who spent much of his time at Fox News before he was fired covering up sexual harassment, helped Kavanaugh land this interview...
I'm not sure who this interview is meant to convince. The GOP's base already doesn't give a shit about the accusations.
At best, it doesn't move Kavanaugh's disapproval numbers. At worst, it does damage, especially if he takes rhetorical swings at his accusers.
20-30 feet is also enough to flood huge swaths of our largest metro areas outside of Florida: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, Bay Area, San Diego, etc.
The sheer number of people worldwide who will become refugees from rising tidewaters over the next few decades is going to be breathtaking. Indeed, current policies ENCOURAGE people to move to areas that could be underwater by 2100.